Fool's Bet
by Scout19
Summary: It started out just like any other bet, but since when have bets ever been simple? And it's going to get more complicated when those who were supposed to be oblivious turn the tables but good. L/C
1. Prologue: The Calm Before the Storm

_**A/N: **Hurray for my first Leon/Cloud fic! I love this couple to death but for some reason never found the urge to actually write about them. Well, I supposed there's a first time for everything. Reviews are appreciated, even flames, so when you reach the end and you see that bluish/purplish button down at the bottom, you know what to do, so get on it!_

_**Disclaimer: **Standard disclaimers applied. I own nothing remotely having to do with Final Fantasy or Kingdom Heart characters found within. As much as I would love to become rich from shamelessly exploiting said characters for my own perverse sense of humor, alas, this was not to be and I profit in no way shape or form from this work of fiction, save for when my ego is stroked by good comments._

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Prologue: The Calm Before the Storm

Placing school-wide bets was always well worth the trouble that never failed to come of it. In fact, one might say that starting large betting pools merely to stir up the student body was Luxord's favorite hobby.

And one would be completely right, Luxord thought to himself as he began drawing up a complex chart in preparation for his next meeting. It was finally his turn to pick something worth betting on in the crowded college campus and half the city was waiting excitedly to see what he chose.

There was nothing on the Planet more entertaining that a Luxord bet, mainly because Luxord was a bet-master that loved nothing more than encouraging those placing the bets to interfere with hopes of fixing the outcome. Yes, Luxord was a man that loved cheating in all forms, but most of when he was the one sitting back and enjoying the inevitable show.

Oh yes, yes, yes everyone on campus loved the one time every other year or so that it finally became Luxord's turn to host the bets.

There would be no need for anyone else to worry about finding a worthy cause to exploit, considering Luxord's bets were notorious for lasting long periods of time (The longest having gone on for a little less than a full school year when everyone bet that Axel couldn't drive Xemnas into insanity. Axel won.), and many, many side bets spawned from the mass cheating that never failed to accompany a Luxord bet.

Luxord stretched his arms over his head and sighed. He'd been thinking for months about what occurrence he could exploit to become his new record. Two months shy of the end of the school year, he scoffed. And he'd thought Xemnas was stronger than that. How was he to know Saїx would have told Axel's boyfriend that Xemnas was obsessed with the horrifying (to him) thought that he had no heart and no soul? He hadn't planned on Saїx of all people to be a tough, little cheater.

So now he was determined to pick a bet that would hold the school in its grasp until the very end of the school year.

He needed subjects with short tempers, he knew that much. When people became angry the stakes raised impossibly high. There was also the ever amusing possibility of physical conflicts. He was almost tempted to think up something that would drag in Sephiroth, the icy man more than making up for him normally stoic demeanor when in a blind rage, but then he reconsidered. People tended to end up dead or critically injured when Sephiroth was involved. As fun as that was sure to be, Luxord didn't want to risk becoming a target.

So new idea…

He toyed with the thought of using Zexion for some time and almost convinced himself before he remembered that Larxene was very protective of her boyfriend's best friend's boyfriend (as confusing as _that_ was). If Zexion became too angry (a humorous occasion if there ever was one), Demxy would know in an instant, and, not being able to ever keep his fat mouth shut, he would proceed to tell Marluxia, and then there would be a very teed-off Larxene on his tail and that was something wanted even less than having Sephiroth out for his blood. Larxene liked fucking _torture_.

He laid his head down on his desk and took a deep breath. This was not looking too good.

He quickly ran through a list of students in his mind.

Sora: Not worth it. Not only would he not care in the slightest people were betting on him, his twin, who would normally have been out for blood (causing a few good laughs for sure) would most likely swallow his homicidal tendencies seeing as his boyfriend had been the brunt of many bets and knew better than to let the angry, little blonde to get into it.

Riku: Also not worth it. With Sora as his best friend (and most likely more than that if Luxord bothered to think about it), he wouldn't care so long as the brunette didn't care, and the brunette never cared.

Roxas: Once again, no go. Axel would know better (having been the primary focus of the previously mentioned Xemnas bet) than to let Roxas get too invested in any bet. Not to mention the fact that whatever he couldn't handle, Sora most certainly could with his god damned cheerful outlook.

Axel: Been there, done that, far too many times for it to the same perfect effect it usually did.

Tifa: She was more likely to get to the root of whatever was bothering her quickly and efficiently and there would be plenty to bother her considering odd circumstances always followed around those who were the focal point of Luxord's bets. If she discovered she was the one being bet on she would probably find a way to sabotage it purely for spite.

Rinoa: The girl was too nice, people would flock to take her side on any issue or any problem she could possibly have. Only the hardest of hearts would be able to bet against her, and there were maybe like five people on the whole campus who were morally corrupted enough to wish uncomfortable situations upon her.

Yuffie: Dear God. He wanted unpredictable not absolutely insane. Anything surrounding her was surely to be so convoluted by the end that any and all bets would have to be called off. Although she was a fun wildcard to play from time to time.

Cloud… And there he stopped dead, an evil, little thought implanting itself in the front of his mind.

He could use Cloud. If he used Cloud then that opened the doors to a veritable cast of entertaining characters. His younger twin brothers, who would back off and let Cloud handle his own problems, would still be unable to resist poking their noses into the whole affair at least one time during the whole proceedings. And one of his oldest friends was Sephiroth, though they fought more often than not recently. And to make it even it even more tempting, one of his best friends was Yuffie, meaning he was more than used to odd circumstances and pranks. Hell, he knew everyone there was to know in some way.

Another evil, evil thought.

He was roommates with Leon Leonhart…

He had been roommates with Leon Leonhart for years, ever since middle school. They were best friends… Best friends?... More than friends?

There was a thought. Could they become more than friends? Luxord asked himself. All the signs were there. Two men living alone together, neither one of them dating (or having dated in quite some time). Was there a large enough margin of success that there would be incentive for people to bet on both sides?

Although the raw potential for cheating was so great Luxord's mouth practically watered at the mere thought. I was almost too juicy to pass up.

And Cloud and Leon were both stubborn beyond belief. If Luxord set the end of the school year as the deadline, there would be no way other than the two of them getting together (something Luxord was pretty sure wasn't going to happen really) to call off the bet and declare the winners.

There were no two better targets, doubly so because neither one of them participated in the nearly school-wide betting ring. Neither of them thought betting was a worth-while activity, or maybe they just didn't care enough to know about it. That would explain why ninety per cent of their friends took place in the polls but they never had.

This newest thought settled the matter for the gambler. Bets where one or both participants knew what was going on were fun to an extent, but there truly was nothing better than watching two people who didn't have a clue as to what was going on try and figure out why their friends were suddenly so interested in them. Why everyone seemed to be so invested in everything they did.

Oh yes, there was nothing better than the unsuspecting victim. His eyes sparkled as he remembered just how many people would give up something akin to their life savings in hopes of making even more munny.

He revised his previous thought. There was _almost_ nothing better than an unsuspecting victim.

The only thing better was watching people shell out more munny than they usually had in a vain attempt to gain something while doing nothing.

And that was something that never failed…

There was a long silence following Luxord's simple proposition while all those present, and those who were logged onto the live online feed, took a minute to appreciate Luxord's apparent genius and to decide which side they wanted to place their munny on.

"I don't know whether you're brilliant or completely insane." Riku muttered, being the first one to break the silence.

"He's brilliant!" Axel piped up from his spot on a sofa across the room.

"Insane!" Roxas responded from his customary place at his boyfriend's side. "It's never going to work out, and then we'll have Cloud and Leon out for blood."

"Cloud's scary when he's mad." Sora whimpered and his twin nodded. It went unsaid that anything Cloud could do would be nothing in comparison to Leon in a full-blown rage. Leon was vicious.

"But what if it works?" Everyone turned at the soft sound of Naminé's voice.

"They'll have no reason to be really mad in that case." Her red-headed twin Kairi pointed out helpfully.

"Doesn't mean they won't be." Sora grumbled, bringing out another nod from his twin. They would know. They'd had to live with the pair for sixteen years.

"So? The more fun for us!" Larxene seemed happy enough at the thought of bloodshed if her happy clapping was anything to go by.

The noise level in the room began to rise as those present began to discuss options amongst each other, several small arguments breaking out between couples.

"People, people." Luxord raised his hands for silence and it was given to him. "Let's let our bets settle this for us. Same rules apply, as per usual. If you cheat, don't get caught. The deadline is graduation day, as it always is, and the start date is tomorrow."

"But that's the first day of school." Demxy whined and Luxord thanked fate, and whatever other gods might have been listening, that he had decided to go against using Zexion. How was he to know Larxene was going to bring the stupid musician along? "I haven't bought my books yet!"

"Don't worry, Dem-baby!" Larxene cooed. "I'll spot you."

"Any other issues or complaints?" Luxord asked. When no one spoke up he went on. Good. The terminals are in the back, right where they've always been. You can expect a preliminary tally in two day's time. Until then… Happy betting."

Luxord chose then to take his leave, more than satisfied at the student body's reaction. This was going to be a very amusing year.

And far away two men hovered over their computer monitor, emotions ranging from amused, angry, confused, irritated, and the all the way to amused to begin the cycle anew.

"Told you you'd want to see this." The dark-haired man stated calmly with a hint of triumph.

The blonde grunted. "Are they blind? Even Yuffie knows. She's always the last to know everything."

The brunette shrugged. "They don't know apparently. Of course they could have just asked…"

"Teach them a lesson." The blonde interrupted his voice hard with anger.

"Oh look, your brothers bet against us." The brunette looked up in time to catch the brief smirk flitting across the blonde's face. "But it seems as though their boyfriends are supportive."

"Just all the more reason to teach them a lesson. They can handle it." The blonde paused in order to scan through the numbers rapidly appearing on the monitor. "Your ex doesn't like us either. Does she really have 10,000 munny to spare?"

The brunette shook his head. "I don't know. I don't make it a point to keep track of her finances."

"Can we make our own bet, or do we have to say yes or no?" The blonde asked, the hint of an idea forming at the back of his mind.

"Of course we can. Luxord thrives on betters taking over. Minimum's ten munny." The brunette held out a hand and the blonde placed a golden ball with a delicate number five engraved on it. "It begins tomorrow and ends graduation day… I guess you always were hoping to graduate with a bang."

"Just place the damn bet, _Squall_."


	2. Day One: Why is Everyone I Know Crazy?

_**A/N: **Thanks to all who reviewed. Hooray for you! This chapter is muuuuuuch better edited and formatted than the previous once since I took the time to reread it twice before uploading it, and then reading it for a third time once I got it up. Don't forget to leave a review!___

**Chapter One**

_**Day One: Why is Everyone I Know Crazy?**_

"Did you hear about Squall?" Sora whispered, fully aware that his brother (complete with roommate) was supposed to be meeting them, but also far too excited to contain himself for another minute.

Axel looked up from where he was systematically picking apart his shoelace with an evil grin stretched across his face. "What's that crazy bastard done this time?"

"He's placed ten munny on them having been together for years and just never said anything about it." Sora answered cheerily.

"He's always right, though." Riku pointed out. He paused and then amended his statement. "Well, at least a little bit right."

"He's gotta be wrong this time, or maybe there's like sexual tension or something and that's what he's talking about." Roxas looked over at where his boyfriend was braiding the frayed strands he'd picked from his shoelace. "He's never completely right."

"It's your brother, shouldn't you know?" Axel asked as he gave Roxas' shoulder a light push. "Leon's been living with you since they started sixth grade. He's like your fourth brother or something. Hell, when you brought me home your mother flat out said she wished it had been Leon and Cloud instead of you."

"That was because she first met you in jail." Roxas reminded the red-head. "She met Leon in Cloud's Boy Scout troop when he was five. The circumstances were hardly the same."

"Not my fault that I didn't know hairspray would explode like that. Those Dalmatians eventually grew their hair back. No harm, no foul." Axel protested.

"Mom loved those Dalmatians." Sora stated. "As did Leon, another reason why she said what she said. He was on her side. _You'd_ just blown up her dogs and informed her that you were... How'd you put it? 'Fucking your son'. I would have hated you, too."

"The look on Cloud's face was priceless, though. I thought he was going to have a heart attack on the spot." Riku grinned at the memory.

"He choked on his applesauce and almost swallowed his spoon." Sora said in obvious distaste.

"Case in point as to why we're going to win and you two are going to find yourselves bargain hunting soon enough." Roxas looked triumphant. "They're best friends. It would be beyond weird to think of them as anything else."

Riku and Axel shrugged and the silver-haired man responded in a stunning use of logic. "It's not going to make a difference whether you think it's weird or not. All that matters is whether they're happy or not. I'm going to have to agree with Squall on this one… There's _some_ kind of tension there. I can't tell if it's sexual or not considering I haven't seen them since end of term last year, but there's no denying its existence."

Axel nodded his agreement at his friend's words, and the table became silent as they heard a very familiar voice heading in their general direction.

"Late, Leon! We're bloody late on the first bloody day!" Four heads turned in time to see an unusually on-go Cloud dragging a decidedly non-on-go Leon behind him.

Sora immediately jumped to his feet and began waving frantically in an attempt to get his older brother's attention, a gesture that was unncessary since they'd met at the same time, at the same bank of table in the North Quad ever since Cloud and Leon had started college.

"We're always late on the first bloody day." Leon mumbled as he gracelessly plopped down into an empty chair. "You don't have to give me a damn headache about it."

"The two of you have been sharing a room since you were eleven and you still haven't figured out that Cloud is a migraine inducing morning person?" Riku asked incredulously. "I find that strangely hard to believe."

"Bite me, Hojo." Leon mumbled as he took the Styrofoam coffee cup that was being offered by his roommate. "Thanks, Cloud."

"Don't think I will, thanks for offering." Riku answered glibly, having spent more than enough time in the Strife household to know that Leon would perk up a bit once the caffeine hit his system or he was allowed to take a small nap. And then around nine o'clock pm Cloud would revert to angry brooding and barely concealed violence and Leon would be the one far too awake for anyone's good.

Surely the fact that they hadn't killed each other yet was enough of a sign of deeper feelings, Riku thought. It was the only thing that made sense.

"Don't tell me you picked another morning class, Leon." Roxas groaned when the brunette nodded. "Didn't you learn your lesson last year, or the year before that for that matter?"

"Apparently not." Axel said as Leon's head began to droop.

"He fell victim to the three-day weekend deal again." Cloud shrugged, obviously unconcerned with the fact that he was going to be responsible for making sure a very angry Leon made it to class on time for the next nine months. "It's just for one more year."

"I take it you made the same mistake and took another night class." Roxas sighed and shook his head wearily at his brother's nod. "Really? Is having Friday off really all that important to you? You two don't even go out!"

Another shrug. "One more year isn't going to kill me."

"If it doesn't kill you, then it'll kill someone else. Did you forget about the time you put Reno in the hospital for four days?" Axel stated. "And you can't keep hiding under the covers all day Friday and killing yourself Sunday night. It's not healthy."

"I like having a sleep day, a friend day, and a work day." Cloud protested. "Leon does, too. Bother him for a change."

Axel seemed to consider this for a moment. He shook his head. "Leon's not awake yet. I like my head where it is, thank you very much."

"You big baby." Cloud accused before poking Leon in the shoulder. "Did you know that they are scared of you?"

Leon shrugged, refusing to look up from the table. "It happens."

Sora rolled his eyes. "When does your first class start?"

Cloud glanced down as his watch. "Five minutes ago."

"Professor Valentine?" Riku asked, knowing that Cloud and Leon had chosen a Valentine class at a strategic point during the day for the past three years due to the fact that the professor was renowned for being late. Cloud nodded in response. "At least Leon got smart about his torture this time around. Valentine lets him get away with murder for the most part, much less sleeping through class."

"Well, I got Professor Highwind last class." Cloud added in his defense. "He _did_ let me get away with murder once… Attempted murder anyways."

"Evil geniuses!" Riku was impressed. "Somewhere along the line, the two of you have turned into evil geniuses."

Leon shrugged once more, it was his favorite go to gesture after all. "It happens."

"Cloud! Leon!" All heads with the exception of Leon's (he merely slammed his head down onto the table and left it there) turned to see the ever hyper self proclaimed Great Ninja Yuffie Kisaragi bouncing in their direction. She could barely sneak into a crowded cafeteria without causing mass hysteria so the ninja title was dubious at best, a fact none of her friends bothered to point out to her. What she didn't have in stealth, she more than made up for in sheer determination and an uncanny sense of how to cause the most amount of agony with the simplest pranks. Her friends tended to like their pride intact. "We're gonna be late! Professor Valentine's in the Teacher's Hall getting his mail."

Cloud got up quickly, pulling Leon to his feet as he went. "Come on, Leon. Wait until we get to class to sleep."

The four left behind watched in thinly veiled amusement as Cloud and Yuffie had to literally drag the irritated brunette away across the quad, not a single one of them able to resist laughing as Leon's gruff voice filtered back to them.

"But we're _always_ late on the first day!"

* * *

"Strife, Leonhart, Kisaragi." Professor Vincent Valentine was not a man to be messed with, and was most certainly a man not used to having students appear late for his class.

Standing a little more than six feet tall, he was always dressed in predominantly black with a customized red leather jacket and a red headband, scarf, thingy holding back his waist-length black unruly hair. But his appearance wasn't the only slightly terrifying thing about him (though his naturally crimson eyes were the number one creepiest).

His most intimidating feature was the way he projected extreme disdain for anything and everything joyful and happy. It was like he was constantly followed by a dark cloud of despair, sending new students flying from his classes in droves for fear of losing their sanity and their ability to feel anything other than vague dread and suicidal angst.

Of course, to those student who chose to return (basically only Cloud, Leon, and Yuffie, neither one of them being particularly impressed with his barely suppressed malice for all things living and dead), his fear factor did not work and so while the pack of new students trembled in fear at their professor's icy tone, sure beyond any hint of a doubt that they were about to become witnesses to a triple homicide, the trio merely shrugged and moved towards to the back of the room where their customary seats were located.

"I take it you three are continuing your infantile tradition of being late for every class on the first day?" A particularly twitchy freshman in the front row paled as Vincent stepped forward off the podium.

"Sir, yes, sir!" Yuffie answered brightly as she offered up a salute before sliding into her seat. Vincent turned his eyes on where the blonde of the group was busy making a sweater pillow for his drowsy roommate.

"So he fell victim to the three-day weekend deal again." Cloud nodded. "By the way, Professor Highwind wanted me to tell you to bring your bike to class today… If you're awake enough to drive it that is."

"Why is everyone concerned so damned concerned about our stupid sleep day?" Leon murmured before accepting the finished sweater pillow. "I fucking _like_ my sleep day."

"Okay, Leonhart. Go back to sleep, boy. We can talk later." And with that, Vincent swirled back up to his podium.

"Right… So welcome to Creative Writing."

* * *

Yuffie sighed and stretched her arms over her head. "I didn't quite realize how much fun one of Professor Valentine's classes is until now. Did you see that brown-haired girl in the front row when Vincent asked her why she chose his class? I thought she was going to pee her pants!"

"What did you answer for me?" Leon asked, now perfectly awake after his mid-morning nap.

"That you needed a class to meet single, attractive males." Cloud answered absentmindedly. Leon hit him in the head. "Ouch! Shit, I said you need a damn fine arts credit."

And then under his breath to Yuffie who grinned and laughed in agreement. "I said both."

"Thank you." Leon handed over Cloud's sweater, choosing to ignore his roommate's comment. Honestly, whispering did not mean Leon's ears had suddenly stopped working. "And thanks for the pillow."

"You should invest in a mini-pillow instead of using Cloud's clothing." Yuffie suggested.

"I _like_ using Cloud's sweater. It smells good, like orchids." Leon admitted, not thinking for a second that it probably wasn't a good idea to mention something like his love of the way Cloud smelled on any given day to Yuffie, fangirl extraordinaire.

"Awwww!' Yuffie cooed. She began jumping up and down in excitement. "Well, you don't have another morning class until Thursday so Cloud can go and sleep in it or something so it'll smell extra nice for you!"

"That would totally work, too, only I don't have that class with him and I need my sweater, so he's just going to have to go buy a damned pillow." Cloud answered sarcastically, making up for Leon's slip with his sarcasm.

"Bully…" Yuffie whined.

"He's always been mean like that, though." The three adults turned at the sound of Roxas' voice.

"Well this is a rare event: Roxas all on his lonesome without a twin or red-headed leech in sight." Leon's sarcastic voice penetrated through his roommate's stunned silence and the blonde jumped. "Look, you've gone and broken your brother."

"Shut up, Leon." Cloud growled out.

"I don't need Sora or Axel to function." Roxas answered blandly, completely ignoring his older brother. "And Axel is not a leech… Okay, so he is, but he's _my_ leech so leave him the hell alone, okay?"

"Possessive much?" Yuffie asked with one eyebrow raised.

Roxas shrugged. "I came to terms with it long ago. I suggest you do the same. Anyway, Sora was looking for you, Cloud."

"What does he want and why couldn't he find me himself?" Cloud asked, confused as to why his baby brother wanted to see him this early in the school year. Normally the brunette managed to hold out until at least the second day.

"He's busy trying to deny that he wants to make sweet, sweet love to his best friend again." Roxas looked bored which was his normal reaction whenever his twin's hidden feelings for Riku were involved. They were all pretty bored of the two friends tiptoeing around the obvious lust they felt for each other. "And it's something to do with his website. He expects you'll do it for free or doughnuts. I say you take him for all he's worth."

"But I like doughnuts." Cloud muttered under his breath.

"Tell Sora to go through _our_ website if he wants Cloud's help." Leon stated firmly, crossing his arms over his chest for emphasis. "He's not going to get away with monopolizing Cloud's Sundays for doughnuts again this year."

"But I like doughnuts." Cloud protested, not pleased that no one was paying him any attention.

"They weren't even good doughnuts either." Yuffie added her two cents into the conversation. "Brother or no, it's about time you started _saving_ some of your munny. You are graduating this year after all."

Cloud glanced over at Leon, an exhausted look creeping over his face. "I'm not going to be getting any doughnuts, am I?"

"I'll buy you some doughnuts." Leon conceded, knowing that when the blonde reverted into means of communication fit for a fairly mature five year old, placating him was the best idea before people ended up in the hospital. "With your brother's munny, of course, and I'll get you the good kind."

Cloud thought this over for a minute before nodding. "I like Leon's doughnuts better. Tell Sora I'm sorry."

Roxas shook his head slowly. "I don't think I'm ever going to understand the two of you."

"What's there to understand?" All present looked up to see Kairi perched on a bench a few feet away stuffing a music player back into her bag. She shrugged after finding herself the center of attention. "It's love."

"Okay, Kairi." Leon answered indulgently with a splash of sarcasm for good measure. "If that's what you want to think…"

"Oh let her have her delusions." Cloud responded. Kairi wasn't going to be moved. Kairi and her twin had been stalking them for years in hopes of being the ones to witness the first display of anything other than platonic feelings between the two men, which made her ignorance of their situation just that much more ironic. "It's not like she's ever going to change her mind."

Kairi stuck her tongue out at the two boys before turning to where Roxas was looking rather irritated, a look that was somewhat permanent. "Where's Axel… Or Sora for that matter?"

Roxas snorted in disgust. "Why does everyone seem to think I can't live on my own for a few hours? They're not surgically attached you know. I shower by myself and everything."

"At least sometimes." Roxas sighed and didn't need to turn around to know there was an immensely evil grin stretching across Axel's face.

"I thought you had class." Roxas muttered without bothering to turn around. He was secretly pleased that his boyfriend had shown up, not that he would have ever admitted it.

"Nah. I misread the schedule. It's tomorrow I've got a class." Axel took up his familiar position behind his boyfriend and wrapped his arms around the smaller blonde's waist. "Today I'm free until one."

"You made your schedule." Leon did not sound the slightest bit pleased. "How did you manage to misread something you created?"

"Leon…" Cloud's voice had taken on a warning tone. It was no secret that the scarred brunette didn't like Axel. In fact, one could say that what Leon felt for the other man was bordering thinly on the side of hate. The only reason he put up with the pyromaniac at all was because, against all his better judgment, Roxas seemed to have strong feelings for the red-head. Leon didn't have to like it, but he wasn't going to be the one to make his adopted brother unhappy.

"Come on, Leon!" Yuffie bounced into the conversation quickly in an attempt to diffuse the rapidly deteriorating exchange before it reached bloodshed levels. Too bad she only ever made things worse. "Axel forgets everything. It's what he does!"

And it was at this time that Roxas and Cloud proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they were brothers when they both thought at the same time…

'Oh god… Please don't say it!'

Too bad Axel couldn't read minds, though one would think the sudden tension in his boyfriend's body would have given him a clue.

"Yeah, man! I just never remember stuff. R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R… Got it memorized?"

"Oh god, Leon, please don't break his skull! Shit! Axel, don't sit there like a fucktard! RUN!"

* * *

"Your brother's boyfriend _hates_ me!" Axel whined as Sora handed him a bag of ice for the rapidly growing lump on the firebug's forehead.

"Number One: Leon is not Cloud's boyfriend, and probably never will be. Number Two: He hates you because you're an idiot, and you have yet to prove him wrong on that count. Mainly because you _are_ an idiot." Roxas answered as he continued his task of picking leaves and twigs out of his boyfriend's hair.

"He used his catchphrase again, didn't he?" Riku asked from his spot on his bed. After spending a good ten minutes getting Axel out of the tree without doing him more bodily harm, Roxas and Axel had headed straight for Sora and Riku's dorm, it being the closest place with welcoming people and an ice machine.

Roxas nodded. "Of course, though I have to admire Leon's tenacity. It took an hour for Cloud and Yuffie to convince him that climbing up the tree in order to keep beating Axel wasn't a good idea."

"Hell, if Rinoa and Tifa hadn't shown up to drag him away to class, we'd still be there!" Axel pouted. "He's got some massive rage issues."

"He's always had rage issues." Sora pointed out. "If you actually bothered to learn from your mistakes from time to time, you wouldn't have to run for your life once a week."

"But… But I'm Axel… A-X-E-L…"

Roxas clamped a hand over his mouth to stop him from going any further. "If you seriously go there _I'm_ going to be the one to beat the ever-living hell out of you, and I _will_ climb a tree to do it."

Axel pouted once more but remained silent once the hand had been removed. Well, at least for a moment. He looked over at Riku. "How come he doesn't attempt to kill you?"

"Because I had the decency to apologize after the dog incident and I helped Cloud pass biology… Twice. He treats anyone who helps his precious Cloud like fucking royalty." Riku grinned. "And I pay him to help me with my blog. I'm a paying customer. He can't kill me. Doesn't mean he likes me, though."

"Oh that reminds me… Sora, Cloud allowed Leon to convince him to make you pay for his help this year." Roxas stated as he picked the last twig from out of the tangled mane Axel called hair.

"Did you mention I was willing to buy him doughnuts?" Sora asked hopefully.

"Leon's buying him the good doughnuts, whatever those are."

"Damn. Riku can I borrow ten munny?" Sora asked as he plopped down on the bed next to his best friend.

Riku groaned. "Fine, but you are going to pay me back… In _munny_ this time."

"Bully."

"Why's Leon so intent on getting you to pay? They're both fucking rich, or they should be." Axel pointed out. "They shouldn't need your stupid ten munny when they've got people paying thousands a month for their computer skills."

Sora shrugged. "Probably because most of it goes to Mom, some to tuition, and nice bit goes to Leon's old orphanage. They keep maybe less than one-fourth of it, though they did have a good summer… Which most of _that_ munny went into the apartment. They need all the munny they can get for the day to day stuff."

Axel shook his head. "Why the hell do they keep an apartment when they move back on campus every year?"

"Because they want to, Axel." Roxas stated blandly. "Look, please at least attempt to control yourself around my family, and that includes Leon. He may be more Cloud's friend than mine or Sora's , but he's a brother to us, and most especially to Cloud. So if you want to keep at least Cloud on your side, then you may want to start making nice with Leon. We're blood to him and he likes protecting family."

"He's never had a family to protect before us." Sora added to the end of his twin's thought with the ease that only twins seemed to possess. "Which is part of the reason why he's so protective of Cloud. The idiot lets him get away with it more than we do."

"That and they're lovers." Riku piped up and then dodged Sora's hand and Roxas' flying pillow. "Sorry… Wannabe lovers."

"You are so full of crap." Roxas said as he got to his feet. "Come on, Sora. We've got Bio with Marluxia next and it's all the way across campus from here."

Sora jumped off the bed and began gathering his stuff together without a second thought.

"Please don't burn down the dorm." He asked as he started walking out of said dorm.

"And try to stay out of Leon's way. At least until Cloud gets done with his night class. Then Leon'll be too busy making sure Cloud doesn't hurt himself or others to bother with hurting you." Roxas warned as he followed his twin out the door.

Axel sighed as the door closed behind the twins. "For the sake of my sanity Leon and Cloud need to start going out. Then Leon will be caught up in protecting Cloud from anyone that so much as looks at him wrong. He won't have time to chase after Roxas in a misguided attempt at protecting him from me!"

"Do you really think dating Cloud is going to turn him into some sort of super protector or something?" Riku asked idly.

Axel shrugged. "I don't know. He sure is super protective of people he has no personal investment in. I would think he would be doubly so if he were dating someone."

"Hmmm… I always forget you weren't around for Leon's Rinoa phase." Riku answered thoughtfully. "The only person he couldn't stand to be around her was Seifer, which was only because he didn't like Seifer anyways, not because he was particularly worried about her."

"Leon _dated_ someone?" Axel asked incredulously. Even imagining Leon out on a traditional date was difficult, Axel didn't know what he would have done had he been around to witness one. Probably have a panic attack. Dating just didn't seem like _Leon_. "No freakin' way!"

"Yeah. They were on and off for pretty much a year when Leon was sixteen. Cloud was actually their biggest supporter. It was annoying." Riku wrinkled his nose in disgust at the memory of Cloud doing anything and everything in his power to make sure Rinoa received the proper courtship from the normally antisocial brunette.

"So what happened?" Axel asked as his curiosity got the best of him.

"She left him from Seifer, something I found highly ironic at the time." Riku paused for a second. "Not that he seemed to care much apart from whom she had left him for. In fact, he was almost relieved when they went back to just being friends I think. Cloud took it harder than he did."

"Yeah, well Cloud and Leon are weird." Axel stated. "They've been living together forever and neither one of them has seriously considered moving out. Not for a woman, a job, or anything. If they don't secretly want each other then they're fucking asexual and I wash my hands of them entirely."

Riku laughed, he had thought the same thing on many, many occasions. "Cloud and Leon are most definitely two of the most complicated people I know, and that's saying a lot considering I loved with Sephiroth for sixteen years. Maybe they really don't care about love or sex. They've always been so serious and responsible that it really is hard to picture them taking time to enjoy much of anything."

"Not even sex?" Axel gasped.

"They spend their entire Friday in bed… Sleeping.." Riku rolled his eyes, knowing exactly what he would do if he had all Friday to spend lazing about in bed with a certain blue-eyed brunette. "Not even screwing around or searching for a woman, honest to goodness sleeping. I don't think they care about sex."

"And I will once again state that Cloud and Leon are weird, really weird." Axel looked up at the ceiling as though it was finally going to give him some answers. "We have got to do something about this. I don't know about your situation, but I know if I don't win, I have to do Roxas' notes for him next year… Correctly. Color-coded and tabbed and god only knows what else."

"Not my fault you picked the anal retentive one." Riku answered. "But I will help you, considering that if I lose, I have to clean for the rest of the year."

"Dude, and you said Roxas was anal? Sora puts Roxas and his file cabinet of notes dating back to the first grade to shame when it comes to being clean! Obviously you have never been privy to one of Sora's attempts to teach Cloud how to properly sort his socks. For a minute there I thought Sora was going to strangle him."

Riku snorted. "I was there, remember? The only thing that stopped him was Leon showing up with doughnuts. Angry brother or not, Cloud will throw down for Leon's doughnuts. Sora let him go."

"What the hell is up with those doughnuts anyways?" Axel threw his hands up in the air and flopped back onto the bed. "They've got crack in them, don't they?"

Riku laughed. "I wouldn't completely discount that. I don't think even Cloud knows where he gets them from. No one knows. He just shows up from time to time with a white, unlabeled box full of doughnuts."

"That sounds more than a little unsafe." Axel grimaced.

"Hey, it's Cloud's stomach. He can die if he wants to." Riku sat up and glanced over at his friend. "And I highly doubt Leon wants to kill him, just manipulate him a bit, not that it takes much effort for the most part. Cloud fucking adores him. Sora and Roxas are blind if they can't see that."

"Maybe they're too close to the situation. They've known Leon since they were three. He moved in with them when they were nine." Axel sat up as well. "I had to convince you when I first moved in."

"I guess you have a point." Riku admitted, remembering how painfully obvious it had all seemed once Axel had finally shown up to open his eyes. "I've known the Strife's since I was fourteen. Hell, they could have developed the sexual tension after I first met them. As it stands, I've got class in five minutes and, as entertaining as this conversation is, I'm not going to miss the first day to talk to you."

"I'm going to chill here for a bit, I think. What time is it?"

"Eleven." Riku answered as he stuffed a notebook into his book bag.

"Two hours then." Axel mumbled to himself. "I think I'll take a nap."

"Just don't burn down the dorm… Again." Riku warned. "And set an alarm. Roxas and Sora normally go bother their brother between classes. I'm not getting killed by Roxas for leaving you sleeping and you missed class… Again."

"Bully…" Axel whined, but he set the alarm on his phone anyway. He didn't want Roxas killing him either.

* * *

"They're giggling about us again." Leon stated as the pair rounded a corner on the outdoor track. The blonde beside him didn't bother with looking.

"I know." Cloud responded. "I'm going to assume Yuna and Rikku bet in our favor."

"From the look on Paine's face, I'm also going to make the assumption that she bet against us." Leon answered and both boys fell silent as they ran past the stands where the trio of girls were not being very subtle about their staring.

"More like bet the opposite as Yuna and Rikku." Cloud pointed out as he began to fumble with the music player at his waist.

Leon grunted in agreement and then glanced over at his suitably distracted friend. "You look particularly hot today." He said loudly as they bypassed the stands once more. Cloud tripped a bit and shot the other man a rather potent glare as the girls began to giggle harder, if that was humanly possible.

"You had best be talking about be being overheated and nothing else." Cloud warned, not the least bit concerned with playing Leon's game.

The glint in Leon's eyes said otherwise but he nodded, waiting until they had pulled even with the bleachers again before stating in as genial a tone as he could manage. "Of course I meant overheated. One more lap?"

Cloud sighed but nodded. He wasn't overheated, nowhere close. He was sweating (they had been running for over thirty minutes after all), but so was Leon… A fact that definitely did not go over the blonde's head. Leon looked extremely hot himself if Cloud were to be completely truthful, and damn it, Leon knew it, too. He knew everything.

They slowed down to a walk as they came around to the stands again to find the girls were leaning up against the fence that separated the track from the bleachers. Yuna was waving, an occurrence that shouldn't have meant anything, but inexplicably translated into 'We are not going to be leaving you alone until you make-out for us in public.'

Cloud waved back, slightly uncomfortable with the way Rikku was leering at him, and both men continued to walk forward.

"Yuna calm down." Paine ordered firmly, not impressed at all with her cousin's enthusiasm.

"But…" Yuna's voice trailed off as she saw the un-amused look on her cousin's face.

"Yunnie!" The brunet turned to her other, more pleasant, cousin, easily distracted by her happy voice. "Did you hear what Leon said?" Rikku gushed happily as she began bouncing around, the odds and end tied into her long hair clinking together rhythmically.

"Yes!" Yuna's enthusiasm was back and she began to bounce in time with her blonde cousin.

"He thinks he's hot!" Bother girls squealed. Paine rolled her eyes and contemplated shooting herself.

"He thinks Cloud looks overheated." She glanced over to where the boys were now slowly making their way around the backstretch. "For what it's worth, I think they both look a bit red in the face."

Rikku stuck her tongue out at the silver-haired woman. "Meanie!"

"Hey." Yuna held her hands up as a sign for peace. "It's only the first day, girls. We're not going to know anything until after winter break at the earliest. This is Luxord's bet after all."

Both girls nodded solemnly, silently promising to hold off on any bet related arguments for the time being.

"I'll see you after Highwind's class." The girls looked up in time to see Cloud waving goodbye to his friend as he picked up a navy gym bag and jogged away.

"Professor Highwind's class doesn't start 'till nine!" Rikku whined as Leon made his way over to the small group against his better judgment.

"He apparently promised Professor Valentine he'd help tweak the online submission system." Leon explained. "He's probably going to shower, pick up his bike, and then head over the English Hall."

"You don't mind him going by himself?" Yuna asked as she raised one eyebrow.

Leon shrugged. "I highly doubt Professor Valentine is going to rape him and not pay him properly. Not that Cloud charges him."

"_You're_ letting Cloud get away with doing something for free?" Yuna asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. Anyone who knew anything knew that Leon was the cheapest man to walk the earth, and he charged for everything, normally forcing his blonde companion to do the same if he could get away with it.

"Professor Valentine lets me sleep in class." Leon sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose absentmindedly. "And Professor Highwind is his favorite teacher. If Highwind or his lover asked Cloud to run around naked covered in nacho cheese, he'd probably do it." And then as an afterthought. "He'd probably enjoy it, too."

"The sheer amount of wrong that never fails to come out of your mouth never ceases to amaze me." Paine monotoned.

"I try." Leon offered up with a blank look.

"So what are you going to do while Cloud's gone?" Rikku asked, far more excited than she should have been considering how mundane the question had been.

"Homework and dinner."

"BORING!" Rikku yelled, in an obvious attempt at shattering everyone's eardrums. "You've got to have something better to do. You can go help Cloud and then take him to dinner with you!"

"Rikku…" Paine's voice held the promise of bodily harm should the blonde continue.

"Cloud can get his own dinner and he most certainly can take care of whatever freelance jobs he wants on his own." Leon answered tersely. For being a campus full of people who hadn't know they had been dating since high school, there sure were a lot of people that were concerned when the pair voluntarily separated.

It kind of made him feel guilty for teasing Roxas about that same thing earlier in the day, but then he remembered who Roxas was dating and all guilt disappeared. Anyone who loved Axel deserved everything they got.

"You're a meanie, Leon!" Rikku whined and Leon bit back the urge to hurt her.

"That's not the worse name I've ever been called, and it's not likely to be the last." Leon chose to answer instead of giving into the urge to beat the hyper out of the blonde. "And Cloud will actually probably call me worse by the end of the day if Reno's dumb enough to take Professor Highwind's night class."

"Leon…" Yuna stepped forward wondering why she bothered to try and make such a man happy when he seemed perfectly content to be a miserable asshole. "She didn't mean to make you angry, Go do your homework and choke on a hamburger for all I care. Let's go, Rikku."

Both girls stomped off leaving Leon and Paine to watch them go, neither one overly concerned about the two leaving.

"Sometimes I wish I had your talent for running them off." Paine stated. "There are times when I am forced to wonder if they really do live in my bathroom."

"They are still sneaking in to wake you up every morning?" Leon asked, knowing that Paine had paid extra to have a single dorm room, a dorm her cousins were constantly breaking into.

"Most mornings anyways." Paine mumbled.

Leon nodded. He felt her pain (no pun intended… this time). Eleven years of being hauled out of bed by an excited Cloud had taught him just how annoying it was to have someone dead set on making sure he was awake when he wanted nothing more than to be asleep.

Paine looked down at her watch. "Almost five. I've gotta get to class. I guess I'll be seeing you later. Be sure to say hi to Cloud for me."

Leon nodded again and watched her walk away, glad to finally be alone.

He turned to leave, fully intending to make his way to the nearest fast food place, but getting stopped mid-stride by a wayward thought that refused to leave him alone.

He never _had_ taken Cloud out to dinner, at least not alone. Not that the blonde had taken him out either, or hinted at wanting to do so. In fact, the closest thing to an actual 'date' they'd ever been on was when they skipped out of their senior prom early in order to spend the rest of the night trying out interesting sexual positions in a hotel room, which had been more kink than romance considering Leon had still been subconsciously trying to prove to Cloud that he was five hundred times better in bed than Sephiroth.

'Eight years' Leon thought glumly. 'Eight years going on nine and we've never been out to a place without a drive-through or spent a romantic night on the beach or anything. No wonder no one knew we were going out. We've never actually _gone out_ anywhere."

But they had never needed to do anything so cliché before. They had fallen in lust far before love, so much so that once they'd realized love _had_ been what they had been feeling all along, they found they wanted nothing more than to skip teenage public declarations and head straight into a more private, adult relationship.

He remembered dating Rinoa. She had been a nice girl and Cloud had been so supportive, telling Leon that it was best to try and that if their relationship turned out to be more important, then Cloud would gladly step back so that Leon could be happy.

A part of him had always sensed Cloud's jealously as Leon had courted Rinoa. The blonde had tried to hide it behind false smiles and fake enthusiasm, going so far as to volunteer his car, his time, and even some munny to make sure Leon provided the girl with the full nine yards where romance had been concerned. But when it came down to the wire he could found that he couldn't make a full commitment to her. She was nice, she was beautiful, and the sex wasn't unpleasant, but she wasn't Cloud and looking in the blonde's eyes every day and seeing the shadows of hurt and jealousy reflected in them eventually wore Leon down to the point where he knew beyond a doubt that he wasn't going to be able to be normal (something Cloud had wanted for him more than anything). He wanted Cloud and he wanted Cloud happy, something he was not so long as Rinoa remained in the picture.

But he had never felt the urge to do anything with Cloud like what he had done with Rin. There had been no flowers for the blonde (ever because Sephiroth was an emotionless pile of angst), no midnight phone calls just to see if he was awake and content (living with your lover tended to make such things unnecessary), and no dates (once again no dates ever in Cloud's case considering the previously mentioned state of emotionless angst of Cloud's only other partner).

'Damn. I've been a bad boyfriend.' Leon thought, now not so hungry any more. 'Cloud bent over backwards for me when I was trying to be normal and I returned the favor by being an ass when he tried to do the same, and then I had the gall to not give him everything I had based on the _assumption_ he wouldn't like it. God, I'm an idiot. Well, as soon as this stupid bet fiasco is behind us, I'll take him out for real. He does like orchids, right?'

* * *

While Leon was debating whether or not _smelling_ like a particular flower meant you actually _liked_ said flower, Cloud was busy fiddling around in the school's database while Vincent was terrifying another class of innocent freshmen.

"P-P-Professor Valentine?" A timid Asian girl asked from the third row. Vincent raised an eyebrow in response. "When do you want our responses to the first prompt by?"

"Did I not just give you an assignment sheet with all the due dates on it not even thirty minutes ago?" He enquired coldly, ignoring a terrified squeak from somewhere off to his left. Damn, but it was fun to be intimidating.

"Yes sir." The girl responded hesitantly before continuing. "But this assignment isn't on here."

Vincent pretended to glance down at his copy of the sheet. He knew it wasn't on there. It was more fun for him to wait for some student or another to point out the lack of due date for the beginning of the year assignment. "Hmmm. You seem to be correct… this time." Another squeak (this time to his right). "So let's make this due… At the end of class. You have thirty minutes."

There were the frantic sounds of one hundred fresh-out-of-high-school students diving for papers and pens in hopes of not pissing off the terrifying teacher on the first day, and Vincent basked into fear right up until the moment when Cloud snorted in amusement. If the kid hadn't been Cid's favorite student… Vincent would have loved to scare some respect into the blonde and his friend, not that he hadn't tried before… The trio was just unshakable.

Although they were some of his favorites, too, not that he would admit it, not even to himself.

"Please just do what you need to, Strife." Vincent muttered as he sat down behind his desk.

"I've been using your online submission center to help you torture students for four years now." Cloud whispered back. "I have every right to laugh at their pain."

"Think for a second, Strife. That was something Mr. Leonhart would say." Vincent smirked at the look of abject horror on his student's face. Cloud had never been one to pass up a good laugh at someone's expense, but he never thought of himself as anywhere near as deranged as Leon was in that regard. Leon _looked_ for people to torment. Cloud just happened upon them.

"Oh god it's eight o'clock." Cloud groaned. "Do you mind if I finish this tomorrow? I've got to get over to the garage while I'm capable of resisting the urge to run over pedestrians."

"Nice to see you still revert to a homicidal state once the sun goes down." Vincent offered up sarcastically as he watched with general disdain as the blonde picked up his supplies.

"It's like vampirism, except I don't burn in the sun and the only person's blood I've ever tasted was Reno's, and that was an accident. Well, a partial accident. He bit me first, and thus deserved what he got." Cloud shrugged. "Or that's what Leon says anyways, but Leon is full of shit for the most part. I never really listen to him."

"You're babbling."

Cloud nodded, shutting up and practically running from the room as a few overly curious freshmen looked up from their furious scribbling to watch him go.

'Sometimes I wonder how they have managed to remain such close friends when both of them never seem to care about what the other says or does unless they are half asleep and likely to injure themselves or others.' Vincent mused with a subconscious evil smirk that sent all distracted freshmen back to their work faster than Yuffie running to make it to a reported Axel/Roxas make-out session sighting.

'Good thing I bet in their favor. Cid's going to owe me big.'

* * *

"Come on, kid!" Cid Highwind's voice carried easily throughout the vast open space of the garage. "Put the fuckin' wrench down and we can fuckin' talk like civilized men."

"No!" Cloud yelled back, making a lunge for the petrified red-head in front of him, and by petrified I mean cocky and ready to start a fight. Students cheered as Cid knocked him back, half of them wanting to see a fight and the other half wanting nothing more than for Cid to just throw both boys out and have the whole affair be done with.

"Let him go, Highwind." The red-head laughed. "I can take him, yo!"

"Like fuck I will!" Cid yelled back as students on both sides went running for cover. They were pretty sure Professor Highwind wasn't going to do something as stupid as release the incensed blonde, but it never hurt to get out of the way on the off chance it happened. "Reno, you had better shut your fuckin' mouth before I damn well do it for you. And Cloud, you are going to thank me for this in the morning, but I'm calling Leon."

"Like hell you are!" Cloud lunged forward again, though whether he was trying to get to Reno or trying to get to Cid's phone before he had the chance to call Leon was up for debate, only to be knocked back by the surprisingly strong teacher. He might have barely barely an inch talled than his student, but he was broader and had years of lifting heavy machinary under his belt. Though, Cloud did have mindless rage on his side making him about two times stronger and more ruthless than normal. Luckily for Cid, however, he had spent the past three years dealing with Cloud's night rage and had already appointed a student to call Leon at the first sign of violence.

"Professor Highwind!" A strangely cheerful brunette in a bright yellow dress piped up from her hiding space behind a lopsided pile of tires. "Leon said he's almost here."

Now Cloud turned his rage on the instructor. "You don't have any right to drag Leon into this. This is between me and Mr. I-Like-Leaving-Fingerprints-On-Cloud's-Bike-And-Then-Being-A-Douche-About-It!"

"Ha!" Reno began tapping a metal bar he seemingly pulled from nowhere against his upper thigh. He loved nothing more than baiting the over-stressed, overly-tired blonde. It wasn't like he was going to get a good fight anywhere else on campus. Not without being arrested anyhow. "I don't even like your bike and even if I did, I wouldn't want to do something as moronic as touch it."

"Reno! I swear to mother fuckin' god, if you don't stop fuckin' taunting him right now, I'm fuckin' kicking you out of my god damned class for good this time."

"Bite me, Old Man."

It would have been a bloodbath at that point had Leon not chosen that precise moment to burst into the garage, seeing as Cid had released Cloud from his death grip in hopes that he really _would_ kill Reno. He'd never liked the little shit much anyways.

"Cloud Edward Strife." Leon's deadly calm voice carried even above the screams and cheers of the still hiding students. The students fell deathly silent. Oh boy, Leon had used the middle name, and as everyone knows (some better than others), once a middle name has been invoked, someone was about to be in deep shit. And Leon was scary enough when he wasn't pissed.

Cloud looked over from where he was preparing to make a flying leap for his opponent's throat when he heard the welcome sound of Leon's voice. Reno, sensing that this was a fight he could no longer win, made himself scarce.

"Leon…" Cloud yawned, his voice taking on as whiny a quality as he was capable of making it. "He touched my bike."

"So I heard." Leon stated as he made his way across the garage to where Cloud was standing, wrench lying on the floor, previous anger long gone. "You know that doesn't give you the right to beat his brain out with a wrench."

"Yes it does." Cloud protested sleepily.

Leon thought this over for a minute. "Okay, so it does, but you know you're not allowed to do it so let's go back to the dorm and you can go to bed. If you're still angry in the morning I'll help you kill him."

Cloud considered this for the small amount of time it took Leon to cover the last few feet to get to his side.

"Okay, but if you get injured, I'm not driving you to hospital."

"Sounds fair." Leon answered and Cloud's classmates looked on with various expressions of relief on their faces as Leon placed a gentle arm around his friend's shoulders and began leading him in the direction of the door.

"Speaking of Fair…" Cloud mumbled, clearly not pleased with whatever he was thinking of.

"I know." Leon cut in before Cloud got the chance to get worked up again. "Your cousin's getting married. Next month, if I recall correctly, to the Gainsborough girl."

"It's the fifteenth, Leon." Cloud sneered. "Asshole picked the fifteenth. I told him we weren't coming."

"He didn't know, Cloud, and we are going. I told him we would, you were tired when you said no. He understood." Leon explained patiently as he opened the garage door and led the other man out into the night air. "You're the best man, and you already have a tux, not to mention the fact that we're Sora and Roxas' ride."

"They can find another ride and Sephiroth can be the best man." Cloud paused as the door slammed shut behind them. "It's our damned _anniversary_, Leon. Nine years since we defiled the upstairs bathroom during homecoming. Nine fucking years and we're going to spend our anniversary at a wedding party for my cousin. Doing something there would be worse than doing it for the first time in a high school bathroom."

"You know, _I_ wanted to go home. _You_ were the one that couldn't wait." Leon sighed. "And now you're the one complaining. Are we really so unromantic?"

Cloud nodded. "It's just the way we are. Now piggyback home before I pick a fight with a hobo again."

"And undoubtedly lose again." Leon added sarcastically as he allowed Cloud to climb onto his back.

"He had a shank, Leon. A shank." Cloud grumbled grumpily into the brunette's ear. "Had I known that I would have broken a bottle or something before picking the fight. Asshole."

"Go to sleep, Cloud." Leon answered, far more indulgent with the blonde than anyone else, especially when he knew Cloud would be embarrassed with the whole 'trying to kill Reno for the umpteenth time' thing in the morning. And he'd be guilty… At least slightly.

"I don't want to. I'm not tired."

"Liar." Leon accused. "You're exhausted."

Instead of a reply, all he received in response was a rather loud and raspy snore. He smiled softly as he patted the blonde's head gently.

"Goodnight, Love."

* * *

_And thus the end of this chapter on a surprisingly sweet note. To be honest, my first version of this chapter stopped where Leon told Cloud he was exhausted and continued on to have Cloud go from Violent!Cloud to Horny!Cloud on the way back to the dorm, ultimately culminating in a delicious lemon..._

_And then I realized it was two in the morning on a school day and the chapter was threatening to spill over onto page twenty-one, so I shelved the nummy, nummy lemon for another day and left it at this. Good old Squally's got a heart in there somewhere after all..._


	3. Day FortySeven: The Wedding

_**A/N: **Okay, so I wanted to post this chapter on the fifteenth, the day it's set on, but one thing led to another and this whole damned chapter WOULD NOT END! I swear. I would think to myself 'I need to stop this now. I need to end it. Maybe here...' and then there wasn't a good place to end and once there finally was, I suddenly wanted to add something, which led to there being no feasible stopping places once again. Lather, rinse, repeat and you've got my style of thinking for the past six days..._

_Oh, and ignore the cop outs where sex is concerned... I sear to you this will earn it's M rating the hard way sooner or later but I orginally planned for the morning scene to be interrupted because I wanted there to be a much better... kinkier?... Outdoor sex scene later on... A scene that would have begun on page twenty-two of my document, two days after I promised myself I would put this monstrosity up... Yeah... So it got back burnered for another time... I fail..._

_**

* * *

**_

Chapter Two:

_**Day Forty-Seven: It's Events Like These That Kind of Make Me Wonder How Anyone Forgets an Anniversary.**_

There was a repetitive pressure pushing down on his right shoulder. There was also a bright light shining down onto his face causing the backs of his eyes to hurt.

Neither one was welcome so he rolled over forcefully, neglecting to remember the usually helpful fact that he was still cocooned in a thick comforter.

"Leon!" Another unwelcome annoyance, Leon thought to himself as he struggled to keep the comforter from suffocating him. "It is nine o'clock on Friday morning and you are still lying naked in bed."

The brunette's sleep clouded, stormy grey eyes opened a crack at that and took in the sight of a perfectly dressed blonde who was apparently the cause of his previous shoulder pressure. He stifled an irritated groan.

"The real problem seems to be that it is nine o'clock on a Friday morning and you _aren't_ laying naked in bed." He managed to get out around his sore throat and paper dry tongue. Pushing back the throbbing in his temples, he reached out with one arm and pulled the blonde down on top of him. If Cloud wanted to be away, then fine, he could be awake, but he was going to be put to work. Pleasurable work. "Give me a minute and I can help you rectify your mistake."

Cloud ran his hands gently through the sleep tousled locks of his roommate's chocolate brown hair and smiled at the small sigh of contentment from said roommate at the gesture. He placed a soft kiss on the other man's lips and pulled away to hover mere inches away from Leon's face.

"We have to leave in twenty minutes to go get my brothers and Zack." Cloud reminded him, unable to resist a small smirk at Leon's groan. "Hey, don't be mad at me. I wanted to skip the wedding."

Leon's response to that was to pulled the blonde's head down into a much deeper kiss, wiggling his still pinned arm out from its blanket prison to meet its partner at Cloud's trim waist. Cloud sighed into the kiss and welcomed Leon's invading tongue happily with his own.

"You've brushed your teeth." Leon murmured against the blonde's lips as he snuck his hands under the hem of Cloud's shirt in order to skim his fingers over the pale skin of his lower back.

Cloud wrinkled his nose cutely and stuck his tongue out at Leon. "And you haven't. I didn't like the whiskey last night when I got it firsthand, but getting it secondhand after hours of fermenting… I half want another shot."

"You always find a way to ruin any potentially romantic moment, don't you?" Leon asked as he set about giving Cloud a nice hickey in retaliation for pointing out his morning breath.

"Says the man who's first thought after kissing me was that I had brushed my teeth already." Cloud said as sarcastically as he could considering he was trying his hardest not to moan at the sensations Leon's mouth and hands were creating in his body.

"Leon…" Cloud managed to force out after a minute of selfishly allowing Leon to continue making him feel good. "We really do have to go soon unless you want Sora and Roxas coming looking for us and Zack sending out the National Guard to find out why we haven't picked him up to head for the church yet."

Leon sighed into the blonde's neck, not wanting to move now that he was comfortable and well on his way to the best Friday morning he's had since school restarted. Having a campus full of people hanging around in hopes of witnessing intimate moments seemed to put quite the damper on his sex life. "Fuck them and fuck the god damned wedding. Right now all I want to do is lie here kissing you for awhile. And then, once I'm satisfied with that, I want to have sex with you, any way you want it, until we collapse from sheer exhaustion. And then I want to start all over again."

This time Cloud was unable to hold back his moan and he threw his head back to allow the brunette easier access to his sensitive neck. "Oh god…. You have no idea how much I want that."

Leon rolled them over so that he was on top reaching under the covers to cup the overwhelming evidence of just how much Cloud wanted him with one hand while lavishing attention on the blonde's right earlobe.

"Oh I know…" Leon squeezed and Cloud purred with pleasure. "You've never been very good at hiding it."

"I don't want to hide it." Cloud gasped as Leon squeezed again. "Oh, I love it when you're playful like this."

"Mmmmm…" Leon moved his hands up his lover's body, a body he had explored hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times. Not once has it gotten old. Not once had it failed to make him hard and wanting. He had been there as it had gone through puberty and adolescence, watching as it transformed into the lean and fit adult body that lay before him. It was a body he found himself just knowing he would enjoy exploring again and again for the rest of his life.

Their lips met again in a much more heated version of their previous gentle kisses, all thoughts of pressing engagements gone from their minds as Cloud's shirt hit the floor. And why had he been wearing so many clothes in the first place? He couldn't seem to remember. All that mattered was the feelings running wild between them.

The only thing that could possibly ruin the moment was if someone came and knocked on the door… And considering Fate is the biggest bitch to ever bitch, that is exactly what happened.

"Fuck!" Cloud yelled and pushed a very pissed off Leon to the floor. "Get dressed damn it! We're late!"

"Happy anniversary to you, too."

* * *

"But _Cloud_…" Sora was whining… again. He hadn't stopped ever since he had arrived on his older brother's doorstep to find said brother, shirtless and looking as though he'd just rolled out of bed, running through his dorm room trying to get Leon to put something on that wasn't black or leather.

"No, Sora, now stop asking before I pull over and you'll find yourself with no ride there as well as without a ride back." Cloud answered testily, his brother's incessant complaints successfully wearing through his normally happy morning personality.

"But Cloud! I don't wanna go home with Axel and Roxas!" Sora looked close to tears; a clever ploy had Cloud not become immune to them a long time ago.

"As if we want you to come home with us." Roxas growled out from his side of the car. "You'll probably kill our buzz, too."

"For the love of all that is holy…" Leon looked up from the book he was reading to shoot the younger pair a glare through the rearview mirror. "I don't give a flying shit as to who's mad at whom and why, nor am I going to sit here and listened to you two bicker all the way to the church. No, Sora, we are not taking you home. You've known this since last month, and Roxas… Just shut up. I don't care if Sora pushed your boyfriend off a cliff, you are his brother and you _will_ take him home or I'm telling Mother about your tattoo."

"I didn't do anything to him or Axel!" Sora protested, causing a muscle at the base of Leon's eye to begin twitching. Roxas wisely kept his mouth closed for the moment. "Axel's just mad because Riku's mad and Roxas just wants to make sure he still gets laid!"

"Oh, hell fucking no you did not just go there! If you weren't such a damned prude, none of this would have happened and you would have a ride home, now wouldn't you? This is your damn bed, _you_ sleep in it." Roxas taunted maliciously.

"I'm not a prude!"

"You've wanted Riku for _years_!" Roxas shot back. "You've been dreaming about him since you met him! Just man up and admit it before you drive the rest of us crazy!"

"I do _not_ dream about my best friend like that!"

"You do to! You talk in your sleep all the time! 'Oh, Riku…' 'Oh, yes!' 'Do it harder, baby.' It's gross!"

"You're gross!"

"Your face is gross!"

"Your mom's gross!"

"Sora, we have the same mom, and I'm telling you called her gross!"

"Bite me!"

"THAT IS _**IT**_!!" Cloud yelled and tired squealed as he swerved over to the curve. "Both of you get out of the god damned car before I hurt you!"

"But how are we going to get to the church?" Sora asked as Roxas tightened his seatbelt in defiance. They had spent most of their lives dealing with Cloud's death threats. They were not going to walk ten miles because they were afraid of Cloud.

But they would walk far more than ten miles if Leon was involved because all it took was for Leon to turn and give them the full power of his icy glare of death before they tumbled out of the car and onto the pavement outside a complex apartment building. Cloud would hurt them, yes, and it would hurt very much indeed, but Leon _knew_ things and he had their mom on speed-dial. Even at twenty years old, their mother was a force to be recognized and respected.

Before Cloud could pull away a tall, black-haired man with bright blue eyes plopped down into the now empty backseat, pulling the door closed behind him.

"Is there a specific reason two of my ushers are beating the ever living snot out of each other on the sidewalk?" Cloud pulled away from the curb with another loud squeal. "And I assume you have an equally good reason for leaving them behind. Hello, Leon."

"Hello, Zack." Leon responded as he went back to his book.

"I'm sorry, Zack. Would you mind terribly if you end up being short an usher or two?" Cloud asked amiably, his headache subsiding substantially now that his squabbling siblings were out of hearing range.

"Not really. Aerith guilt-tripped me into using them in the first place." Zack stretched and leant back into the backseat. "What'd they do to deserve getting kicked out of the car this time? Although… I'm sure your mother will be happy to know they're in front of my apartment instead of two states away in the middle of a cornfield at midnight again."

"Sora and Riku are fighting about something undoubtedly stupid and so Axel's pissed at Sora because he friend's upset. Apparently whatever it was, it was Sora's fault this time because Roxas is actually taking Axel and Riku's side for once." Cloud supplied.

"Doesn't mean Sora needs to come hide in our room for an hour while I was trying to get over a hangover from hell." Leon muttered into his book.

"Fun night, fun night." Zack agreed from the backseat. "And Cloud only tried to choke one stripper, and only hit Reno twice. I say my party was a success."

"You are seriously depraved." Cloud responded, still a little on the guilty side about trying to harm the innocent girl he'd hired for Zack's bachelor party the night before.

"I've been told." Zack leant forward to place his elbows on the passenger and driver's seats. "So I take it Sora's earlier than warranted appearance killed your plans?"

"He's sitting rideless in front of your apartment, I'm two seconds from running over the next lifeform stupid enough to cross my path, and Leon's reading Poe again. What do you think?" Cloud answered grumpily.

"Touché."

"You planned that this morning?" Leon asked, pulled out of his bad mood enough to close his well-worn book and place it on the floor by his feet.

"Of course. Did you really think it was nine when the sun was barely all the way up yet?" Cloud shot a quick look in Leon's direction to see the brunette staring at him in half-hidden amusement. "I wanted to surprise you since you were upset awhile ago about us not being romantic or something."

"As adorable as this exchange is, I'm feeling mildly freaked out with all the love floating around." Zack spoke up, never one to be content with being ignored.

"You were the one who insisted on getting married on our anniversary. Get over yourself." Cloud responded sulkily as he turned his full attention to road again.

"Speaking of your anniversary, there is going to come a time when they find out about the two of you." Zack warned. "I think you've waited more than enough time to sit them down and say: 'Hey, there is no way two young, sexually active men have been able to share a room for forever and not develop sexual feelings for each other. Now I know you're both blind, but…"

"Graduation." Leon spoke up, more to stop Zack from rambling than anything else. "The whole damned school is going to find out then, too, the hard way."

Zack ran this newest bit of information through his mind for a minute. "I can't believe this. I never thought he would stoop this low for the sake of a petty bet."

Leon shrugged. "Boring year? Axel wouldn't make himself the butt of another joke? I do not know, nor do I particularly care his reasoning. So long as I get paid, I don't need to know."

"You didn't…" Both men nodded. "You did… Your mother is going to eat your internal organs and use your skins as throw rugs polar bear style if you make a scene at your graduation ceremony."

"Mom stopped scaring me when she caught us in the garage 'breaking in' Fenrir." Cloud raised one shoulder as a sign of indifference. "After that trauma, anything else is cake."

"And I had just about managed to block that incident from my mind for good and you had to bring it up again… On my wedding day!" Zack shuddered.

"Taught you not to come borrow Mom's lawnmower anymore." Leon pointed out.

"How did your mother put up with you for so long?" Zack asked bouncing his leg up and down nervously as they drew closer to the street the church was on.

"I could ask the same question of yours." Cloud answered as he flicked the turn signal and turned down a narrow street deftly. "You spent more time locked in your room for breaking out of the house than you did anywhere you tried to run away to."

"At least _our_ mom didn't resort to handcuffs… Not that I would have minded…" Leon shot a devious look in Cloud's direction.

"Dear sweet Jesus Christ!" Zack yelled, slamming himself back into the backseat as he pretended to claw his eyes out. "That is my _cousin_ you are insinuating wanting to have kinky Handcuff Sex with!"

"Hey, it's not like you haven't walked in on us doing it like that before…"

Cloud sighed deeply, half wishing he wasn't so used to his cousin's overreactions that they didn't cause him so much as the briefest of pauses any longer. He remained silent as he pulled into an empty parking space, waiting for Zack to finish hyperventilating and Leon to finish laughing enough to notice they had arrived.

"Oh shit!" Zack paled as he suddenly realized where he was. "How'd we get here so fast?"

"You live like five minutes from the church, dumbass." Cloud stated calmly, his patience having been tested almost beyond its capacity from the events of the morning. "Honestly… How does Aerith put up with you when you need to be driven to your own wedding because you can't manage to make a five minute drive on your own?"

"She has the patience of a saint and knows I love her more than anything." Zack answered as the three men got out of the car, Cloud pressing a button on his keys to lock the doors behind them.

"You're an un-trainable puppy." Leon stated. "And I have every right to say that because you've made more than your fair share of messes that you refuse to help clean up in our room. Anyone who can love you had better have the patience of a saint, for the good of your health as much as anything."

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you didn't like me." Zack said, getting as close to a whine as he could without infringing upon Cloud's last nerve where whiny people were concerned, having correctly guessed that the blonde's brothers had already pushed him to the brink of insanity where that nerve was concerned. "He does like me, Spike? You'd tell me if he didn't, wouldn't you?"

"I wouldn't have to tell you, Zack." Cloud answered, internally bristling at his cousin's choice of nickname.

"In the last month or so, Leon has run Axel up a tree, broken Seifer's leg, broken Zell's hoverboard in six pieces, knocked Axel unconscious, pushed Riku down a flight of stairs, tripped Demyx and then held out during the resulting Larxene attacks, ran Axel up another tree, punched out one of Hayner's teeth, pushed Kairi and Naminé into the fountain, and just yesterday he chased Axel around the entirety of the campus _twice_, only giving up when I hit him upside the head and dragged him away." Cloud crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his boyfriend. "I think you'll notice if he doesn't like you."

"Well, he did break my foot when I was in seventh grade…" Zack thought out loud.

"Only because you were being an idiot by flirting with that copper-headed bint when you knew very well that Aerith was already well on the road to being in love with you." Leon stated, holding open the door the church.

"Shit, you are five hundred times more protective of your friends than you are your boyfriend. No wonder there's a campus full of oblivious students betting on your private life. Hell, if I didn't know better, and by knowing better I mean having walked in on you two in compromising positions too many times to be healthy, then I would say you were nothing more than two people who happen to share a room."

Cloud and Leon exchanged confused looks, before Cloud spoke up. "Why would he have to protect me? I can take care of myself."

"And Roxas can't?" Zack asked enjoying the flash of guilt that flickered across Leon's face.

"That's different." Leon mumbled. "It's not Roxas I don't trust, it's Axel. They guy's a fucking leech who has a reputation a mile long following him around."

"Roxas is the toughest kid I've ever met." Zack pointed out. "If anyone can handle having a boyfriend like Axel, it's Roxas. I don't know how Axel hasn't gone crazier than he already is with super-protective Roxas on one side and super-protective Leon on the other. The poor boy never gets the chance to take his balls off the chopping block."

And this was the point where Cloud quickly cut in, knowing that a hyperactive black-haired idiot was about to trade places with Axel for the foreseeable future. As much as he loved watching his brunette boyfriend torturing his family, he figured that Aerith torturing him for allowing Leon to critically injure her groom on her wedding day would far outweigh any momentary entertainment such an injury would give him.

"Alrighty then, so let's go find the priest and get all dressed up before Aerith's bridesmaids get here and throw a fit because we're not as ready as we should be." With that, Cloud turned and strode down the center aisle towards the main altar, leaving the two left behind little choice other than to follow.

* * *

"Okay, Sora and Roxas somehow managed to get here in time, which means Aerith won't be angry about that, and you're stuck with two immature ushers who are currently trying outdo each other where seating the most guests are concerned… But the limo guy got lost on the way to her house so she's running five minutes late." Cloud watched his cousin's face fluctuate between nervous and excited as he gave his report. "Oh, and Reno stole the candleholder from the side altar but Sephiroth got it back and has locked the thief in what I think was a storage closet. It had mops in it in any case. Selphie offered the use of her perfume to hide the dusty cleaning supply smell when we let him out. I hope you don't mind one of your groomsmen smelling like Tropical Ocean Breeze."

Zack waved his hand absentmindedly, more concerned with getting his already straight tie even straighter. "Reno can smell like a mythical fairy princess for all I care so long as he behaves himself during the ceremony."

"You've got him standing between me and Seph. I think it'll be fine." Cloud pointed out. "And he promised not to goad me at the reception tonight. I'm assuming it has more to do with his fear of Aerith stealing his kidneys to put on display in her hospital than wanting to make you happy."

"She wouldn't have to steal them." Sephiroth's icy monotone entered the room before his six foot frame, his silver hair glinting in the dim lighting. He looked stiff and uncomfortable in his tuxedo and considering his normal leather and belted attire, he probably was. "All she'd have to do is give him her disappointed look and he'd break out a pocket knife and get them for her."

"Where _is_ Reno if you're here?" Zack asked hesitantly, not sure if he really wanted to know. He was regretting his choice of groomsmen more than a little right then.

"Leon took over watching the closet so I could go check on the ushers." Sephiroth answered, draping his long frame over an elegant plush chair. He looked over to where Cloud was re-fixing the tie Zack had screwed up with his nervous fidgeting. "Your brothers wanted me to let you know that they are no longer speaking to you and hope you drop dead."

"Oh joy." Cloud mumbled sarcastically, slapping Zack's hands away as the older man tried to destroy the tie Cloud had just painstakingly adjusted. "You are not going to go relieve him, are you?"

"That would imply I have a heart, which we all know isn't true, so I'm not going to bother with pretending." Sephiroth responded as he began examining his nails.

Cloud sighed. "Unless you want Aerith practicing endotrachial tube placement on you, I'd bother with at least pretending to be civil where he is concerned today. You can return to planning his untimely murder after the wedding. Now make sure Zack doesn't climb another wall while I go get Reno. This whole damn mess should be starting soon."

Running his hands through his perpetually messy hairstyle, Cloud made his way out the door of the antechamber Zack had been given as a dressing room and down the hall in search of Reno's storage closet prison. He smiled as he caught sight of Leon leaning against a cheap wooden door at the end of the hall, arms crossed over his chest and a particularly menacing scowl set on his face, twisting his handsome features into a mask of intense displeasure.

"Part of me knew he wasn't coming back, but it wasn't necessary for him to flick me off as he went into Zack's room." Leon said as Cloud took a place against the wall right next to him.

"He still hates you." Cloud stated, ignoring a loud crash and long stream of curses that filtered out from the closet. "But he promised to leave you alone for tonight so long as you don't make me cry again."

Leon snorted in laughter. "He said all that, did he?"

Cloud laughed, too. "Okay, so I made up the last part, but I think it was implied. Good thing he graduated last year or he'd have blown our cover day one purely out of spite."

"No, he would have tortured me for a few months before becoming bored and then ratting us out in hopes that it would somehow lead to your leaving me." Leon rubbed the bridge of his nose to ward off a growing headache.

"Both of you need to get over your bitterness and understand that I was going to go with whoever I wanted to go with regardless of what either of you did in attempts to sway me." Cloud help up a hand for silence when it looked like Leon was about to interrupt. "I was, and still am, the only one who has the final say in who makes me happy. He is still going to be my friend and you would still have been my brother if the whole damned incident had gone the other way. There is nothing to say that there's not going to be another Sephiroth, or another Rinoa for that matter, so pull on your big girl panties and deal with your issues because you sure as _hell_ don't want them to become mine."

And on that vaguely threatening note Cloud pushed off the wall and turned to make his way down the hall, giving Leon one last instruction before moving out of hearing range.

"Please let Reno out when you see the rest of us head to take our places. Selphie left her perfume on a table down the hall. Make sure he gets thoroughly sprayed before you let him make his way to the altar."

Leon was left behind with only the occasional crash and yell from Reno to keep him company. It was in this moment that he remembered exactly why messing with an already pissed off Cloud was not a good idea. People _burned_ when they were dumb enough to make their problems so big that they spilled over onto Cloud's already full plate. There were two nice scars on Roxas and Sora's back to attest to that. Cloud knew how to make it _hurt_ and Leon found that for the first time since agreeing to throw himself full force into their relationship, he was worried about slipping back into taking Cloud for granted, and that scared him more than he was willing to admit.

The thought of sharing a dorm room for the rest of the year with an angry Cloud _terrified_ him. There were many, many sharp objects in their room and Cloud would enjoy using every single one if it came down to it.

Jesus, it was the second time in a little more than a month that Leon had found himself reconsidering the way he treated his blonde partner. It would have been sad that it had taken a _bet_ to point out his relationship failings, if he hadn't known that Cloud hadn't thought anything of it until Leon had started acting strange and asking questions.

"Leon!" Reno had apparently figured that a lack of someone kicking back and threatening to kill him meant Sephiroth had pawned the job of keeping him contained off on someone else. Seeing as Cloud would have let him out by now and all the ushers were busy, the only person who Sephiroth hated enough to foist menial chores and inconveniences off on was none other than Leon Leonhart, and while Reno was still out of the infinitesimal two per cent that knew exactly why Sephiroth has suddenly begun outright hating the brunette at the end of his freshman year in college, he was very much within the ninety-nine point nine per cent that acknowledge said hatred.

"I'm not going to let you out." Leon's voice was just as cold and uncaring as usual, but Reno couldn't help but think he heard something else; something almost human.

If Reno hadn't known any better, he would have said Leon was worried about something.

But Reno did know better and he let his thought pass. Leon was one of the coldest, most brutal human beings on campus, with only Sephiroth (when he had been there) and a much younger Zexion (dating Demyx had turned the schemer's brain into mush in Reno's opinion. A man as devious as Zexion used to be should not abandon his evil ways just because an immature musician started crying) being anywhere close to his stoic nature and refined love of anyone's mental anguish. He worried about nothing and no one, and would much rather use a person shamelessly than be their friend; Strife family excluded.

"I think I'm suffocating in here, yo!" Reno tried to gain some sympathy, something akin to asking the door to open of its own accord where Leon was concerned. The man didn't have a sympathetic bone in his body. "Like I've got claustrophobia or some shit! I'm going to die in here! Please don't let me die! I'm too unimportant to take up valuable space in your conscience!"

"Your childish yelling is only making me want to keep you in there longer." Leon answered absentmindedly as he flipped through the applications on his phone to keep his boredom at bay.

"By keeping me locked in here you're listening to Sephiroth!" Reno tried another tact. It really was cramped in there. "You're letting him win!"

"Nope." Leon shut his phone and began counting ceiling tiles. "Cloud told me not to let you out until they started to take their places, so Cloud wins. I find that I'm perfectly okay with that."

"Well… Cloud's a terrorist, yo!" Reno knew he was being ridiculous, but when one has a mop handle perilously close to taking away one's anal virginity (not that he had any form of virginity left), one's logic tends to fail them.

Leon raised an eyebrow in amusement. "Is he really?"

"Yeah! He really is. You're letting the terrorists win, man! That's like un-American, yo! The FBI's gonna come kick your ass! They'll ship you away to Iraq!"

"Do you take the time to listen to what you want to say before it explodes from your mouth?"

"No, not usually… But that's not the point. The point is that I promise not to do anything bad for the rest of the day if you let me out of here. I swear on the holiness of Rude's sunglasses, yo! I just wanna be FREE!!"

He slammed his body against the closet door just as Leon noticed Zack being led from his room while being supported by his two non-captive groomsmen. Reno tumbled out into the hall looking dazed and confused. He gathered his wits together and got his bearings in time to look up and see Leon Leonhart staring down at him with an almost feral grin.

He was holding a pale blue bottle filled with a mysterious sloshing liquid.

"I hope Tropical Ocean Breeze is your usual perfume because you sure as hell are about to have to get used to it real quick."

Reno was unable to hide his unmanly reactionary gulp, though he did put up a valiant effort.

* * *

"You look gorgeous!" Rinoa sighed breathlessly as her and the other two bridesmaids clustered around the newly married happy couple in a swirl of sky blue fabric. Aerith smiled gracefully as she looped her arm through her new husband's.

"Thank you." The brunette tucked a wayward strand of hair that had fallen from the loose pile of curls at the top of her head behind her ear, giggling as Zack picked one of the white carnations from out of her up-do to present to her. "You all look beautiful as well."

"You look the best, dear." Zack said, clearly still a little giddy from the previous ceremony.

"Reno, stand still damn it!" Cloud was busy adjusting the red-heads suit while Rinoa, Tifa, and Yuffie were fawning over Aerith's beautiful wedding dress and marveling at Zack's tamer than usual hair. "The photographer is going to be here soon and you are not going to look like a street urchin in the wedding photos."

"No!" Reno whined as he unsuccessfully tried to doge Cloud's unwelcome advances. "I already smell like a damn girl because of this fiasco, yo. I'm not goin' to be photographed dressed fit to make my father proud. It ain't goin' down like that!"

"You can 'go down' any way you want _after_ the photographer is through. Now stand still!" Cloud promised as he tightened Reno's tie and straightened his lapels. "I am _so_ unbelievably over fixing everyone's clothing. You are a grown man, so shut up and deal before I give up and knock you out."

"Please don't render any wedding party members unconscious, Cloud." Aerith's soft voice broken into their arguments and Reno stopped fidgeting. "And thank you for getting Zack here sober and keeping him from loosing anything too important."

Cloud shrugged at the positive attention. "It's what the best man is supposed to do. You were the one who wanted to marry him; I'm just the one that got him here."

"Awwww… I love you, too!" And she swooped down on him in a flash of blue and white, embracing him tightly as he floundered around in the poufy satin of her skirt, trying desperately not to step on anything and rip it. He was so distracted that he almost didn't catch her soft whisper. "And thank you for giving up your own special day for mine. You have no idea how much that means to me."

Cloud smiled warmly at her as she pulled away. "Anything for you, Aerith. And besides, I promised our uncles that I would get him out of the den somehow."

Everyone present laughed. It was a well known fact that since Zack parents had died two year past, he had spent more time in his uncles' house than his own apartment. They had all received several calls numerous times throughout the month by one harried uncle or another as Zack's nerves about his upcoming wedding had gotten worse and worse.

"Is this the Fair-Gainsborough wedding?" A silky smooth voice entered the happy crowd with ease. All present turned to see a tall frame complete with long, auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail and a battered black cowboy hat walking towards them with a camera in one hand and a tripod in the other. Aerith nodded in the affirmative. "Irvine Kinneas at you service. Sorry I'm late. Traffic was horrendous."

"It's fine Mr. Kinneas." Aerith answered smoothly, clearly ignoring her swooning bridesmaids in favor of moving the obligatory picture taking along expeditiously in order to allow her parents (who were arguing quietly a few feet away about the best way to insert a tube into the brain) to make it in time to get on their flight.

"Alright, so all the pretty ladies need to go by the rose bush and we'll get the girl group shot done first. Boys if you could assemble by the gazebo… Yes, that looks wonderful." The handsome photographer began positioning the women in an aesthetically pleasing manner as they grouped around a radiant Aerith.

The picture taking continued on without much incident other than Reno trying to climb a tree in order to drop a water balloon (no one knew exactly where he'd gotten it from) on Sephiroth's head. The potentially deadly (for Reno) prank was stopped by a harried Cloud before any water bombs could be deployed. Needless to say, the rest of the pictures had Reno firmly wedged between Cloud and Sephiroth who were under strict orders to maim him if necessary in order to keep him from misbehaving.

All sighed with relief when the photographer allowed the bridesmaids and groomsmen to leave for the reception while he took Aerith and Zack's first pictures as a married couple.

The ride over to the reception hall was less rushed and far more comfortable than the picture session, mainly because Cloud was too exhausted from keeping various friends from screwing up that he was content with resting his head against his seat and dozing and Reno didn't really have much room in the limo with all six members of the wedding party squished in with him to maneuver enough to do something mind-blowingly stupid for once. The same went double for Yuffie, with Rinoa and Sephiroth strategically placed between her and the male troublemaker.

And when Aerith and Zack made their grand entrance into the hall after being announced for the first time ever as "Mr. and Mrs. Zackary Fair", Cloud finally let himself fully relax, reveling in the good feeling of a job well done.

* * *

"Cloud looks calmer now." Axel pointed out to the fuming blonde beside him. "I'll bet you could go talk to him now and not get killed."

"I don't want to talk to him. He made me walk ten miles with a douchebag." Roxas glared into his soda, refusing to look at either of his brothers. "And he's not going to take Sora home for us. I knew _that_ before Sora even asked. It's the fifteenth."

"Yes, Roxas, nice to see that you still take the time to look at a calendar in the morning, dear." Axel responded, more than a little confused as to what the date had to do with anything.

"Leon and Cloud always go out and get piss drunk on October fifteenth. Well, they always go out and do something… The drinking is more of a since they became old enough for Mom not to kill them thing." Roxas shrugged. "I don't know why, but it's like important to them or something. All I know is that it started their freshman year in high school and it never ceases to occur. In fact, this is the first time I've seen them on October fifteenth since they were sixteen."

"That's… Odd." Axel rolled his eyes and chalked the mysterious disappearances up to just another random weird issue having to do with Cloud and Leon's insanely weird relationship. "Do they do anything normal?"

"I think they balance their checkbooks sometimes. That's about as normal as it gets." Roxas conceded. "I love my brothers to death and I know they're both weird, and I know that they both have their secrets, Sora's aren't so much secrets as things he hasn't out-right said to me, but they are _my_ brothers and I don't think I want to understand them. Especially not Cloud or Leon, they wouldn't be the same if I knew everything about them, and I love them the way they are now, emotionally stunted personas and all."

"Truly inspiring." Axel mumbled sarcastically. "Now all we need is for Cloud and Leon to finally admit that they secretly want each other and for Sora and Riku to do the same and we're set."

"Axel… It is statistically impossible for all four of us to turn out to be gay. Sora and I…. Well, that's pushing it, but with the whole twin thing it's fairly acceptable." Roxas downed the last of his soda, wishing that his mother and Leon weren't two tables away so that he could get his hands on something stronger. "If Cloud _and_ Leon were to turn out to be gay… That's three blood related brothers and one adopted brother to admit to liking the same gender. It would be some kind of freaky anomaly. The universe could like collapse in on itself."

"Bring on the end of the universe, baby, 'cause as long as I get paid in the end I don't give a shit!" Roxas cringed as his mother looked up at his boyfriend's outburst and sent a disapproving look in his direction.

"Keep your damned voice down, fuckwad." Roxas managed to get out through gritted teeth. It had taken years for his mother to allow Axel to show up at family gatherings and he wasn't about to get that privilege taken away because Axel couldn't control his mouth for once.

"Aw, Rox, you're no fun at all." Axel whined but he lowered his voice anyways. Leon was now glaring at his from where he was conversing with his adopted mother. What Axel didn't fear in Roxas' mother, Leon sure made up for. Together they were a nearly invincible team who wanted nothing more than to see Roxas settle down with a nice partner instead of one with a juvenile record.

"I don't have to be fun when we're only here to keep Mom happy." The pair watched as Aerith and Zack made their way over to Leon and Mrs. Strife with a finally calm looking Cloud trailing behind in their wake. They both exchanged looks when they saw the amber liquid sloshing around in the crystal tumbler in Cloud's hand.

"Well, at least he's not going to kill anyone tonight, only hit on Leon until Leon gets pissed enough to drag him home." Axel smirked. "Where I will assume they will finally fall into bed together and have kinky Drunken Sex that will lead to their inevitable announcement that they will now be exclusively seeing each other. Winning has never tasted so sweet."

"It's going to take a lot more than Cloud getting drunk to get them together." Roxas snorted in disbelief. "Like… Oh, I don't know… Leon actually being gay?"

"Have you ever _asked_ Leon what his sexual preference was? Or Cloud either for that matter?" Roxas shook his head.

"I don't _have_ to ask when I already know the answer, at least in Leon's case." Axel rolled his eyes as his boyfriend continued. "He dated Rinoa forever, and I'm pretty sure he still likes her. He talks to her more than anyone who's not Cloud in any case. I'm sure he's just waiting around for Seifer to fuck up badly enough that she finally leaves him for good."

"Roxas, my love, you are blind."

"Fuck off, Axel."

"Roxas! Axel!" And it was now their turn to be accosted by Mr. and Mrs. Zackary Fair. Roxas loved his cousin as much as a family member could, but he couldn't say that he knew much about the older man. Zack had been much closer to Cloud and Leon's age than his and Sora's and since Sephiroth was Zack's friend as well as Cloud's, they tended to hang out more. Not that Roxas minded. He secretly thought Zack was an idiot.

"Where's Sora?" Aerith asked as she hugged Roxas tightly while Zack slapped Axel on the back good naturedly.

Roxas shook his head. "I haven't seen him since we got here. I'm assuming he's hiding from Riku. I haven't seen him either."

"Huh." Zack looked thoughtful. "So they still haven't admitted their feelings to each other?"

"Riku did." Axel piped up. "Sora not so much. He's been camping out on our floor for the past few days rather than suck it up and deal with his problems. Though, I have to say that he's going to have to go back to living at home if he wakes Cloud up at eight o'clock on a Friday morning again. Cloud was not pleased."

"No, he wouldn't be." Zack agreed as he wrapped an arm around his wife's shoulder. "It must have been a big shock for Sora to be dumb enough to interrupt his brother's sleep day like that. What did Leon have to say about it?"

"I think Leon tried to eat his spleen…"

"Oh my, it must have been a good mid-morning nap then." Aerith said, trying and failing to hide her giggles behind her hand.

Roxas shrugged. "Wouldn't know, wasn't there. I'm assuming it must have been. I haven't seen him reduced to breaking out Poe for quite some time. Not since Axel accidentally ran over his cat with his bike and the cat ran away."

"How was I supposed to know the cat was blind? It's not like he had a sign is bold neon letters proclaiming 'BLIND ANIMAL. AVOID AT ALL COSTS'…. Oh my god! They're hugging!" Axel's squeal was bordering on girlish, but it was hard to tell considering there was a room full of girls that were doing the exact same thing he was. Cloud looked up from his untimely embrace of his friend to find the whole room staring at them.

"Yes?" He asked as he released Leon who began to glare until everyone turned back to their conversations. He seemed to think about something for a moment before shrugging it off and going back to asking his mother another question about her lilac bushes.

"How much has Spike had to drink anyways?" Zack asked Aerith, slightly concerned. He wanted the blonde to be relaxed enough not to revert to his normal homicidal tendencies, but he didn't want him buzzed enough to give the whole hall a public display of affection.

"Enough to make him touchy-feely." Roxas answered as his mother became the next person to fall victim to a Cloud hug.

"Damn, and I don't have a single reliable groomsman to monitor him." Zack moaned at the thought of Reno or Sephiroth being given the task of keeping Cloud under control once night began to fall. It would end much worse than merely letting the blonde run on his own devices. Leon wouldn't be much help either, seeing as he loved to see people drunkenly embarrass themselves. "Roxas…"

"No. I am not spending my evening babysitting my idiot of an older brother." Roxas' tone of voice left no room for argument.

"Hey! I fought for your honor today!" Zack put on his infamous puppy dog pout. "The least you can do is watch your brother for a few hours."

"I highly doubt you fought for my honor today. You won't even fight for the last doughnut."

"Would _you_ fight _Cloud_ over the last doughnut?" Roxas shuddered and shook his head. Zack grinned triumphantly. "I did defend you, though, just like you asked me to. Leon was not pleased and as soon as I get home from my honeymoon I'm probably going to be shot. You owe me."

"I owe you nothing. Get Tifa to do it." Roxas had put his foot down and he was stubborn enough to make arguing with him not worth the pain.

"She would love to, I'm sure." Aerith stated calmly. "She's watching to make sure he doesn't run away before it's time for his speech anyways. She might as well make sure he doesn't get wasted while she's at it. He's not staying past that first dance, is he?"

Zack nodded. "Nope. Leon and he have plans later."

Before Roxas or Axel could ask what those plans were (each for their own separate reasons since Axel was hoping for something along the hot and sweaty sex side of the spectrum and Roxas was looking for something of the going home and sleeping until Monday variety), they were interrupted by a deep voice somewhere behind Zack.

"Hey, Puppy. Nice to see you finally grew a pair and put a ring on her finger for good."

"Uncle Angeal!" And he then launched himself on his grinning 'uncle', almost knocking the taller man to the ground in his enthusiasm. "I saw you at the church but you disappeared before we could get you to come over and wait for the pictures!"

"You know your uncle doesn't like posing for photographs." Angeal answered as he ruffled his 'nephew's' hair.

"Speaking of…Where _is_ Uncle Genesis?" Zack asked as he released the man he had known as his uncle ever since he'd been taking his first wobbly steps.

"Hiding in a corner with that damned play of his last time I checked. He told me to tell you hello for him once I found you." Angeal turned his gaze to where Aerith, Roxas, and Axel were watching him with obvious amusement. "You look especially beautiful today, Aerith."

"Thank you." Aerith said for what felt like the thousandth time. "Would you mind telling Genesis that we appreciated both of you coming to the ceremony? I know how hard it is for you to get him out of the house."

"Naw, it was no problem. He was due for a bit of fresh air anyway." Angeal patted Zack on the shoulder in a sign of almost brotherly affection. "But I really should be getting back to him. I think some idiot gave him some champagne, and you know how he gets when he's wasted… Unless you _want_ him performing the first act of _Loveless_ topless while perched on the DJ booth."

"No, I don't think that's going to be necessary this time… Thanks again for coming." Zack returned Angeal's wave as the other man wandered off into the thick crowd.

"Cloud did _such_ a good job today, yo." Reno burst into the conversation randomly with the first thought to come to his mind that was clean enough to say in public. He twisted around Roxas and Axel to stand in the middle of the small gathering, more of to hide from Selphie than any desire to actually talk to those present. He had, for some reason, decided that it was prudent to show his dislike of Selphie's choice of perfume by dumping the remains of her bottle on her head.

"What do you want, Reno?" Roxas asked, having spent enough time with his boyfriend's cousin to know when the pony-tailed troublemaker wanted something.

"Nothin', yo. Just wanted to congratulate my best friend one more time on managing to hook the sexiest girl Radiant Garden has to offer." Reno offered up his best lopsided innocent grin.

It made him look guiltier than a child with their hand stuck in a cookie jar.

"Thank you for the compliment." Aerith smiled graciously. "Now go apologize to poor Selphie before she finds you and shaves your hair off."

"How do you _know_ shit like that?" Reno yelped, his mouth hanging open in shock.

"She's standing behind you with a pair of clippers."

"Oh, god! Not the hair! Anything but the hair!"

* * *

"I'm bored, Mom." Cloud complained. To be fair to him, he was anxious to get the cake cut so he could give his toast, dance once with Tifa, and watch from the sidelines while pretending to care who caught the garter and bouquet, and get the hell out of dodge in time to throw his own private party, a party only Leon was invited to. So he was to be forgiven if he sounded a bit like a two-year old. He hadn't had a very good day.

"How old are you?" Mrs. Strife was a short, stout blonde woman with kind blue eyes that were turning milky with old age. She was a gentle woman around those who were not the fruit of her womb or juvenile delinquents, to the two previously mentioned categories she was a pushy, scary woman who was always poking her nose into their business. "Because you had better be five since I _know_ I did not raise a twenty-one year old man to be whining at a fancy social gathering."

"Don't be mean to him, Mom." Leon spoke up from his assigned place at a circular table bordering the dance floor. "Sora woke us up early this morning and Cloud's been back and forth between bitchy, responsible, and angry ever since."

"Aerith wants you to go back to the head table." Mrs. Strife pointed to where the brunette was motioning for Cloud to rejoin the wedding party. She was unable to completely contain her sigh as her eldest child eased himself into the empty chair next to Leon, choosing to ignore Leon's previous comment.

"Aerith can want whatever she wants. The wedding's over. I'm done eating. I wrote out a damned speech for her idiot of a husband. Until it is time for me to stand up and deliver said speech, I am done being the best man." Cloud leant back in his chair and made himself at home.

"Cloud…" Mrs. Strife looked like she wanted to chastise her son but chose not to. He had done his duty well enough up to that point to deserve a break.

"Mom, I love you, and, against my better judgment, I love Zack and that is why I agreed to do this, but I'm tired and irritated and trying my hardest not to kill my siblings or Reno or Sephiroth, who has not left me alone since I started drinking by the way." He smiled and waved at a group of Aerith's friends as they walked by, his lips melting into a scowl once they'd passed. "I just want to go home already since most people who would bother us are stuck here until they get over their adolescent fight."

"Who's fighting?" Mrs. Strife asked, secretly hoping it was Axel and Roxas and that they were going to actually go through with breaking up this time.

"Sora and Riku." Cloud answer as he dodged Leon's hands in order to steal the brunette's roll. "Apparently Riku decided to try asking Sora before attempting to kiss him again. Needless to say, Sora once again took offense to the idea and is now camping in Roxas' dorm room for the time being. I told the boy to just sneak attack but he never wants to listen to me. Polite bastard."

"Oh dear." Mrs. Strife looked distressed at the news of her son's problem. "As much as it pains me to know that I'm never getting grandchildren out of any of you, I still want my babies to be happy. Are you _sure_ you boys don't want to adopt?"

"Very sure." Leon jumped in quickly, the mere thought of him and Cloud being responsible for raising a child sending him into a mini-panic attack. "Fawn over Zack and Aerith's kids when they get here or harass Sora about adoption, you had better not even think about entrusting a child to Axel, but _please_ don't screw up some innocent child's life because you want a baby to spoil."

"Leon, never say never. You don't know what you will and won't want in a few years. Without having to pay your tuition and with your brothers graduating in two years, you won't be paying for theirs either… You make more than enough to create a nice home for a baby or two."

"Mom, please stop." Cloud wasn't too proud to beg where his mother and grandchildren were concerned. "And don't talk about the tuition situation in public."

"Cloud, Leon, I respect your decisions for the most part, but they need to know. It's not fair to them."

"Nothing is fair." Leon said as he took a small sip of his drink. "We'll tell them on our own time."

"Tifa's distracted, let's take a walk." Cloud said from out of nowhere as he jumped to his feet dragging the brunette along with him, more wanting to escape the sudden awkward silence than anything else.

"She does not like us hiding things from Roxas and Sora, does she?" Leon asked a they snuck out the back door to the reception hall and made their way to a tall willow.

"She told me at the Fourth of July picnic that she feels guilty about accepting so much of our help without giving us any recognition." Cloud sighed as he ducked to make it under the low hanging willow branches to take up a spot leaning against the trunk of the tree.

"She raised us and never got anything for doing it except a few crappy macaroni cards on Mother's Day. Paying her car note and sending Roxas and Sora to college is the _least_ we can do." Leon pinched the bridge of his nose.

"You know her, though. She wants nothing more in her life than to give credit where credit is due and to have another baby to spoil. Since she's struck out on the latter account, she's now ready to focus on the former." Cloud reached out as Leon went past him in his pacing and pulled the other man so that he was flush against the blonde's body.

"Mmmmm. As sexy as you truly are, what happened to 'doing something at my cousin's wedding reception would be worse than our first sexual experience being in a high school bathroom'?" Leon asked, raising an eyebrow at the blonde.

"I think we have done far worse since then." Cloud placed a light kiss on his boyfriend's lips, stifling a low moan as Leon pushed against his hips. "And I haven't had sex since the day before school started. I think I'm past the point of being picky where location is concerned."

Leon groaned. "When I agreed to help you teach thousands of students a lesson, I never thought that would include being stalked to the point where we have to barricade ourselves in our bathroom in order to get a moment without prying eyes or, god forbid, cameras."

"How was I to know Rikku was a bigger fangirl that everyone but maybe Yuffie?" Cloud asked, more to himself than Leon as Leon set about un-tucking his shirt. He bit his lip as Leon's hand ghosted across the rapidly tightening front of his dress pants. "You burned the tapes, right?"

"No, but I locked them up, so quit worrying and let me fuck you properly before someone comes out and we have to go back to pretending that we don't want each other." And with that, Leon violently pushed against the blonde's body, pressing him as hard as could against the tree, swallowing his partner's moan with his mouth.

* * *

"How was I to know that Tifa would allow herself to be distracted by Reno being chased by Selphie?" Aerith sighed as she took the long train of her dress in hand so that it wouldn't drag through the neatly trimmed grass that led to a small grove off willows on the reception hall's back lawn. "Their car's still here so they can't have gone too far, and Cloud promised. He is many things, but a liar is not generally one of them."

"He is also running on little sleep, a lot more alcohol than I would have liked, and over a month's worth of sexual tension if Roxas is to be believed about the hordes of rabid fangirls following them around. This makes him irrational and prone to do things he normally wouldn't." Zack pointed out as they both picked up the pace. "And something tells me that Leon is not going to help him remember his promise when his reward for helping Cloud escape is a relief of his own tension."

Aerith was about to once again point out that the only vehicle the two men could have used to leave was still in the parking lot when they were both brought to a dead halt by a rather loud, slightly ragged moan emanating from the general direction of the grove of willows they had been previously walking towards. The newly married couple exchanged a brief looked of relief that Zack's best man apparently _hadn't_ run away, only to fall into a fit of giggles right after as the full force of what he _was_ doing managed to sink into their minds.

"Poor boys." Aerith whispered, pretty sure that the two… occupied… men weren't going to hear her, but taking precautions just in case. "How long do you think it's going to take?"

Zack paused as a much louder moan broke through the cover of the trees followed by a word that had obviously been made up on the spur of the moment considering it was in no dictionary he could remember using, but that sounded unmistakably dirty none the less. "I would say give them a few minutes to finish and a few more to clean up."

"Well, I think Cloud did a good enough job today to warrant a little reward and it won't kill our friends to socialize a bit more before getting their promised cake, wouldn't you agree?"Aerith took the dark-haired man's hand in hers gently and Zack nodded. Cloud had been strangely the most mature person in the entire wedding party. "You think they'll be embarrassed?"

"Cloud… Maybe. Leon, hell no." Zack grinned as he hugged his wife closer to him. "Leon would have done it right there on the dance floor for all the world to see if he thought he could get away with it. Out of all the times I have managed to walk in on them, which is quite a lot considering fate apparently hates me, I think I have seen Leon contrite about his actions only once, and that was because I caught him trying to entice Cloud into giving him a blow job when we were supposed to be cleaning out my parents' house after they died. He even said he was sorry and in hindsight I wish I'd somehow managed to have a camera with me because no one is ever going to believe me if I ever tell them that."

"Leon apologizing is a rare occurrence indeed." Aerith agreed, desperately trying to ignore the sudden scream that rocked through the night air. "I love the man to death, but sometimes I want to smack his stubborn head against something extremely solid, like a wall or a streetlamp."

"Well, if you're looking to damage something no one cares about with Leon's thick skull, might I suggest the string of stop signs that do not allow one to go the posted thirty-five miles per hour on that busy road in Hallow Bastion?" Zack grinned childishly. "And if you are looking to damage something people _will_ miss… I would have to point you in the direction of Uncle Genesis' computer. I think Uncle Angeal will probably pay you for that one."

"No, I couldn't do that. Your uncle is just going to have to content himself with a decently moving stretch of hassle-free road for the time being." Aerith answered teasingly. It should have been weird to joke around with Zack while her two best friends screwed like bunny rabbits not even fifty feet away, and on her wedding day no less, but it inexplicably wasn't. It wasn't that it felt _right_ per se. It just felt… Real… It was exactly what she would have expected from them and it felt more comfortable than it had any right feeling.

It was also getting late and she wanted to have her own alone time with her special partner sometime in the next century. "They have got to be done cleaning, right? I haven't heard anything since the scream."

"I'm sure they are, and if not… They shouldn't be having sex in public if they don't want people walking in on them in intimate positions." Zack stated firmly.

"So go get them." Aerith demanded. "You've walked in on them more than enough times already. It won't kill you to do it again."

"May I remind you that it is my _cousin_ you are wanting me to catch with his pants down." Zack rubbed the back of his head absentmindedly. "And my adopted cousin, though that always sounds slightly wrong when I think about it that way… Anyways, I do not feel the need to see any of my family members in any state of undress unless absolutely necessary. Leon's your friend. He won't kill you… Or let Cloud kill you. You go."

"Oh, you big baby, we'll go together." And with that, she began to drag her husband over the carefully manicured lawn and through the tree line…

Where they found Leon and Cloud locked together in a tight embrace, luckily fully dressed, though their clothing was in less than perfect condition, and it looked like they weren't about to part any time soon seeing as Cloud had a hand tangled in Leon's brown hair forcing the brunette to continue kissing him with a sleepy kind of sated passion.

Zack cleared his throat loudly, sighing as all his gesture succeeded in doing was to redirect Leon's mouth to his blonde cousin's neck while Cloud inhaled deeply and rested his chin on his lover's shoulder with his intense blue eyes staring blankly at the couple watching them.

"Can it wait ten more minutes?" Cloud asked, practically pleading.

"We've already _been_ waiting for five minutes." Aerith said, choosing to ignore the light blush that suddenly spread over her friend's cheeks. "Another hour isn't going to kill you. Besides, Tifa and Rinoa are two seconds away from setting up a complex search party complete with ropes and cameras. I don't think you're going to like the results if _they_ find you."

Cloud detangled his hands from Leon's hair and moved them down the other man's body to rest gently on his hips. "Leon, they have a point. And all our stuffs at home anyway."

"Don' care." Leon mumbled into the blonde's neck. He tightened his hold on Cloud's waist to emphasize his reluctance to leave the relative privacy the low-hanging willow branches provided.

"I don't care that you don't care." Cloud's voice was stern but the fact that he wasn't actively trying to pull away made it hard for even Zack and Aerith to take him seriously, much less Leon.

"Now boys…" Aerith used her best patient mother voice. "The longer we stand out here wasting time, the longer it's going to take for you to get out of here and away from those who would interrupt you. That and your mother's getting suspicious so unless you want her ruining that stupid bet you've got going, I'd get your sorry butts inside and pretend you disappeared to worship the porcelain god in an upstairs bathroom or something."

Leon chuckled and released his captive, leaving Cloud leaning weak-kneed against the willow's broad trunk. "That's not all we've done in upstairs bathrooms."

"Do I really want to know what you're talking about?" Zack asked against his best judgment. But what else was one to say in such a tempting situation? Blackmail was always a wondrous tool.

"You remember that time you had Mom force us to go to your freshman homecoming with you so Aerith's friends would have partners and you could spend more alone time with her and we disappeared for like an hour and told you we'd just been on a walk when we got back?" Leon asked, as innocently as Leon was capable of asking anything since he was the farthest thing from an innocent as could be.

"Of course. What about it?"

"Let's just say we weren't _walking_… And that we were both missing something very important once we got back… Not that you could see it…"

"You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me…" A pause and then… "Where?"

"The upstairs bathroom over the band hall."

"Dude! I fucking _peed_ in that bathroom… Oh god… It wasn't… You didn't… You couldn't have been in the middle stall…"

"You mean we couldn't possibly have chosen the only stall with a properly locking door? Of course it was the middle stall." Leon looked immensely smug while Cloud looked like he was about to lose his dinner. But that was more from the many drinks he'd previously consumed (When one chooses to place someone who has intimate knowledge of Cloud's horny drunken state in charge of monitoring said drunken state when she had 100 munny riding on Cloud instigating public displays of affection with a specific brunette… Well, then one gets a tipsier than usual Cloud) than any concern for the conversation.

"Oh my god… I took a _shit_ where my cousin lost his _virginity_… Aerith, would you be so kind as to kill me?"

"Oh Zack…"

* * *

"Will somebody _please_ extract the photographer from Selphie and remind him that he is _not_ being paid to get lucky with the guests?" It seemed as though Responsible!Cloud has returned somewhere in the time he'd been missing. Sephiroth was not pleased in the slightest with this newest development seeing as it was hard to get your advances returned when the object of your affections was focused on everything but you and having fun.

He showed his displeasure by ignoring his blonde crush in favor of staring (glaring really) off into space.

"I was talking to Sephiroth. Reno, you sit down and think about why you deserved to have an inch of your hair brutally hacked off. Good boy." Cloud ran a hand through his hair in frustration for the twentieth time since being dragged against his will back into the reception hall. "Now since it's not a good idea for Reno to piss Selphie off twice within an hour and Aerith's bridesmaids are helping the caterer find the misplaced knife for the cake-cutting, that leaves you and me. _I_ haven't been a useless, sullen jackass for most of the day. _You_ have. Wanna guess who's going to pry two horny adults apart? Here's a hint: His first name begins with an 'S' and is nearly impossible to spell."

"I just want to let you know that I now have a reason to hate you for the rest of the evening and will soon commence with making your life a living hell once my task is completed." Sephiroth stated as he reluctantly got to his feet. "Consider yourself warned."

"I am considered acceptably warned." Cloud answered sarcastically. "Now go before Tifa and them get back with the knife."

"He doesn't really hate you, yo." Reno spoke up from where he was fondling the now uneven end of his ponytail as Sephiroth moved out of earshot. Cloud sank down into his seat at the head table and shot a weak glare in his friend's direction.

"I know that." Cloud sighed deeply, wanting nothing more than for this evening to draw to a close so he could escape and sleep until Monday. "It's kind of like me and you. I don't hate you, but that doesn't stop me from hitting you and plotting your untimely demise every chance I get."

"He hits you?" Reno asked incredulously. He might not have known a whole lot when it came to his friends love lives (mainly because he didn't care so long as they were happy enough), but he did know about Sephiroth's blatant interest in Cloud. He was neglectful, not blind.

"Not usually." Cloud admitted. "But he has. Remember that time we didn't talk for a month and I ended up taking you to some concert with me instead of him against my better judgment?"

"Of course. That was the time we almost got arrested for public indecency." Reno grinned goofily. That had been a fin night he wished he remembered more of. "If Leon hadn't shown up with your mother and lawyer, we would have been."

Cloud nodded. "Good times, good time. I can't _begin_ to tell you how much _fun_ explaining to my mother and Leon that I really only liked you as a friend was. Anyway, the reason we weren't talking was because he punched me through a wall and I responded by giving him a concussion. I'm surprised we started talking again as soon as we did. I thought we were never going to be friends again."

"Yeah, well, he likes you." Reno shrugged. "I knew he wouldn't stay mad for long. You should just suck it up and give him a chance."

"Reno, can we not discuss this at Zack's wedding? It's inappropriate." And making me feel uncomfortable, Cloud added in his mind. Reno looked like he wanted to say something more but was mercifully (in Cloud's opinion) stopped by the triumphant return of the three missing bridesmaids and the now found cake-cutter.

The whole hall got to their feet as Zack and Aerith made their way to a microphone that had been placed in the center of the dance floor.

"Before we get the toasts started, Zack and I wanted to once again thank everyone for coming and being with us today. It means the world to the both of us and I can't even begin to express how happy I am right to see everyone here and healthy." Aerith's smile was radiant and she was as near to glowing as a human being could be.

Zack stepped up to the stand next, grinning like a fool. "And without any further ado, let's get this toast business out of the way so we can get to the part we really want… The cake!"

The hall burst out into applause as Cloud and Tifa walked forward to take their places, exchanging brief hugs with the happy couple before sending them to their places of honor at the head table.

"Thank you, Aerith and Zack. It's nice to know we're only marginally more important than cake." There was a smattering of laughter at that and Tifa grinned nervously as she stepped back to allow Cloud to take center stage.

"Zack…" Cloud began and his mind went blank from there as he looked out into the blurry sea of faces watching his every move. His perfectly written and painfully memorized speech disappeared leaving him a big, fat bag of nothing to work with along with his suddenly crushing fear of public speaking. "Well… Zack's my cousin, so maybe I'm biased from years of knowing him and being forced to spend time with him, but I really and truly believe he's an idiot."

There was a long pause as the crowd digested this bit of information. Cloud didn't know who started laughing first, but were he to ever find out, he would have kissed that person gladly because one person's laughter was enough to set the whole hall into hysterics.

Gaining confidence from the fact that no one was throwing food or other disgusting items at him, he carried on. "Look, that doesn't mean I don't love him to death, but when I'm the best groomsman with the best set of public speaking skills… You might have a bit of a problem upstairs."

"And I commend Aerith on being able to put up with him long enough to him a commitment out of him…" Another rousing round of laughter. "But seriously… He is a good man with a heart of gold and he truly does deserve someone as wonderful and lovely as Aerith. In truth, he is more than just a cousin to me; he's my best friend, idiocy and all. Yeah, it sounds horrendously corny and he's probably going to give me hell for saying it after this is all over… But it's the truth in a way."

"So congratulations Zack and I know you are going to have the best marriage and you don't need my luck, but I give it to you anyway because it's only a matter of time before you crash the car or burn down the kitchen, and that's when your love is going to be tested. But I know you two can make it. It not, then there is no hope for the rest of us."

"Thank you both for forcing your way into my life and congratulations once more."

If the thunderous wave of applause was anything to by, Cloud had just knocked it right out of the park.

* * *

"Never again. I swear to god I am never doing that again. Thank god my brothers are gay." Cloud was curled up in the backseat as Leon drove them home.

"You didn't do bad, babe." Leon answered as he carefully maneuvered down dark and half abandoned streets. "Mom loved it and Uncle Genesis even came out of his corner to asked you if he could quote you in his next play."

"Doesn't mean I like doing it." Cloud answered petulantly.

"You don't have to like it to do it." Leon glanced back to find Cloud pouting at the back of his head. "Twenty munny says if Reno were to ask you to be his best man tomorrow you'd be unable to turn him down."

There was a loud sigh from the backseat. "I just want to let you know that I hate you and I'm going to sleep, so you can go fuck yourself."

"That's not nice at all."

"I'm not a nice person. You know this and yet it always seems to surprise you."

"Nah. You pretend to be a badass but we all know you've been secretly keeping a heart buried under the violence."

"And you slept with a teddy bear until you were fifteen and sobbed after Axel ran over your cat."

"Come on, Cloud. Now is not the time to be playing the blackmail game. Not after the whole world just heard you call Zack your best friend… I wonder if I can get me a copy of that wedding tape."

"Do so and I'm moving back home and barricading myself in my room when I'm not at school. Have fun trying to have sex then."

"I could have sex with someone else."

"Liar. You love me."

"Grudgingly so, yes."

"Shut up and drive, asshole."

The rode in silence for about five minutes before Cloud spoke up again.

"Hey, Leon?"

"Hmmm?"

"Happy anniversary."

* * *

_**A/N: **Anyone amused by that chapter... I know I was... Oh and I find it highly ironic that Reno would call Cloud a terrorist, considering he WAS a terrorist in Final Fantasy... At least in the beginning... So, good job there Reno (who was also a terrorist). And I once again apologize for the sex cop outs. I hate it when others do it and I hate it even more when I do so, yeah... Kind reviews, yes? Kind reviews get lemons... And... cookies?_


	4. Day SixtyThree: I Like My Candy Sexy

_**A/N: **Alrighty then. There may still come a time in the not-too distant future where I will post a chapter on the day the chapter occured in the story. Sadly enough, today in not that day. So if reading about Halloween about a week after the fact isn't something you enjoy doing... I'm sorry. It can't be helped this time around... Epic fail...._

_Oh, and all signs described in this chapter are accepted American Sign Language signs. I love signing. It makes saying the dirty things I'm thinking more socially acceptible, tee hee._

**

* * *

**

**Chapter Three**

_**Day Sixty-Three: Hey, If They're Dumb Enough to Still Give Me Candy, Then Who Am I to Tell Them No?**_

"They are coming to the party, right? They promised, didn't they?"

"Yes, Sora, they are coming. I talked to Leon yesterday and he confirmed it." Riku watched calmly as Sora attempted to hang pumpkin lights from the ceiling of the dorm common room. "Cloud also reminded me to tell you that they'll be at the orphanage by noon and they expect you to already be there."

Sora looked down at his friend with panic in his eyes. "But I still have to help decorate the quad and move the DJ equipment with Xigbar! There's no way I can get all that done and make it in time to set up the kids' Halloween party!"

"Your brother thought you might say that so he sent Sephiroth to the quad to take over for you." Riku shook his head. "I swear, one day I am going to get him to teach me how to successfully manipulate my brother even if it kills me."

Sora pouted but made his way carefully down the ladder anyway. "Just because I know how to hang a set of lights without making it look tacky, doesn't mean that Cloud has the right to push me around."

"You can't still be mad at him about the 'leaving you behind at Zack's wedding thing.' They told you a month in advance that they had other plans for the evening." Riku pointed out as he took a particularly heavy box from where it was threatening to crush his friend.

"Thank you." Sora rolled his shoulders and picked up a slightly lighter box. "And, no, I'm not still mad about that, though he could have been nicer about it. It's just this stupid party he always assumes I'll help him with. Yeah, it's for a good cause, and I love making those little kids happy, but I'm twenty years old and I have better things to do on Halloween than dress up like a clown and entertain children. It wouldn't kill him to take my feelings into account from time to time and maybe have the _decency_ to ask me if I want to help him instead of _assuming_ I'm going to be there."

"Sora, that is probably the most selfish thing I have ever heard you say, and I can't say that I approve of it." Riku said as he followed the small brunette down a hallway.

"Hey, I deserve a chance to be selfish every once in a while. I'm the head of every damn committee worth heading on this campus." Sora sighed as he placed his box down in a storage closet, standing back to allow Riku to do the same. "Forgive me if I think those orphans are going to have the perfect party with or without me."

"Against my better judgment, you are forgiven."

"You don't have to be an ass about it." Sora mocked his friend's condescending tone, but smiled none the less. "And I'm going to help, mainly because the orphanage means the world to Leon and Leon's the one that bothers to take the time to ask me what I do and don't want to do instead of assuming like Cloud does. That and I think Tidus and his girlfriend are supposed to be there and he has one of my sweaters he borrowed at our last family reunion. He promised to give it back to me."

"He still goes to those things? I thought he hated all of you."

"He does, but his dad allows our mom to twist his arm into forcing Tidus to attend reunions and Leon's orphanage deals." Sora shrugged. "We think she's in denial about how much we really don't get along."

"He seems like a nice enough guy. Why don't you like him?" Riku asked as he accepted the water bottle Sora was holding out to him.

"He is a nice guy, and he's not really all that bad to hang out with, but we've just never seen eye to eye about much of anything. He was about a year too young to keep up with Cloud, Leon, Zack and their friends, but he was about a year too old to want to hang out with me and Roxas at family gatherings, so he got the raw bit of the deal, and ended up following the adults around where his father enjoyed pointing out his many flaws for hours on end to anyone who would listen. Needless to say, we have been blamed and he likes us about as much as we like him."

"Sora, is there any way that your family is going to begin to make sense?" Riku ran a hand through the silvery strands of his hair. "You've got two cousins, a twin, a brother, an adopted brother, three gay uncles (one of whom has always been that way, one of whom is not your real uncle, and the other who became that way after his wife died), and a mother who wants nothing more than for you and said brothers to have little babies of your own running around."

"We'll start making sense about the same time that you and Sephiroth do. And at least we don't have like ten cousins like Reno and Axel." Sora sighed deeply and began digging through his pants pockets to find his car keys. "Well, I might as well go on ahead and get started on the orphanage. Maybe I'll have enough time to come back and finish up the dorm if I finish early."

"I'll go with you." Riku offered. "There's nothing better than helping innocent orphans for boosting your levels of good karma. Considering I'm planning on getting wasted later and doing some very non-innocent things, I'm going to need all the help I can get."

Sora rolled his eyes but motioned for his friend to follow him anyways. "Well, if that's not sound logic for helping people in need, then I don't know what is. What happened to people helping because they felt like it, not because they wanted something?"

"It disappeared around the same time you admitted to helping people because you're being forced to." Riku responded sarcastically. "And orphans at that… I'll bet some of them are even sick and in need of some cheering up. You are a cruel, cold monster."

"And you are an arrogant asshole." Sora's cheerful expression belied his harsher than usually words. It had taken him a long time to get over the shock of his friend's crush on him, well, more like that his friend's crush on him hadn't gone away like he'd been hoping, and now that they were back on speaking terms, he wasn't about to ruin it by insulting the other man for real. "Agree to disagree and let's get this nightmare over with?"

"Only if you say the magic words."

"Riku, I am not lowering myself down to your juvenile level."

"I guess someone doesn't really want my help in entertaining the kiddies, huh?"

"I would like you to know that I hate you very much right now and you can expect a locked door to greet your upon your arrival at our dorm tonight."

"I'm not giving in this time."

"Fine…"

"Say it…"

A very heavy, hate-laced sigh.

"… Deal or no deal?"

* * *

"Where's Leon?" Why both of his brothers asked him the same question up on arriving at the orphanage was a mystery to Cloud. Maybe it had something to do with their twin powers, powers he was almost completely certain they had though they refused to admit it, or maybe it had something to do with the fact that the brunette was the only conspicuously missing person in the small living room that had been set aside for the abandoned children that lived in the Radiant Garden Orphanage For Underprivileged Children.

He was going to bet on the creepy twin connection because it made him feel better about his crazy theories.

"He went to go pick up some doughnuts for the kids. They love his doughnuts." Cloud answered with a slight smile. As mad as he was at Leon at the moment, he couldn't help but be moved by how much the seemingly emotionless man loved the little kids living in the orphanage.

"_You_ love his doughnuts." Sora cut in sarcastically as he passed by the doorway to the living room with Riku in tow. Damn, he'd been in a snit ever since he moved back into his dorm room. It was really beginning to grate on Cloud's nerves, though he had to admit that Sora had been less nosy when it came to his life with all the worries going on concerning Riku.

"No one asked you, Sora." Cloud shot back testily. He almost missed Sora's usual cheerfulness in the face of his new, sullen attitude. "Now, Roxas, you and Axel can start blowing up balloons or something, and make it quick. Matron said she'd be back with the kids sometime soon and Leon wanted at least the living room done by then."

"So tell him to hurry his ass up and help us." Roxas crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his brother. Sora may have forgiven Cloud for the wedding incident, but Roxas held grudges, and he held them for a long time.

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." Cloud responded as he shoved a box full of bags upon bags of balloons a little harder than absolutely necessary into his brother's hands. "Now go get your boyfriend from out of the parking lot and remind him that when he gets lung cancer from smoking, I'm going to be laughing right along with Leon and he's just going to have to get over it."

Roxas sighed but complied, knowing that, if nothing else, Cloud was the only one aside from Sora that had accepted Axel without question. As much as he wanted to punish his brother for being a dick, he wasn't about to drag Axel into it. The poor red-head needed as many allies as he could get.

Cloud watched his younger brother go, ignoring a glare he was being given from Riku, who had followed Sora as the brunette had made his way back into the room. "You don't have to be an ass to everyone, you know. It's not going to kill you to be nice for a change."

"And it's not going to kill you to keep your damned nose in your own business where it belongs from time to time, is it?" Cloud asked venomously, wondering if spending so much time with Leon had finally begun to wear off on him. He normally wasn't so brutal (bitchy really), but he hadn't been in the best of moods lately. Maybe the stress was finally getting to him.

"Do you kiss your mum with that mouth?" Riku taunted.

"Do you both want to shut up and _do_ something before Leon comes back and kicks both of your asses?" Sora looked up from where he had begun untangling strands of black and orange tinsel to glare at his brother and friend. "As entertaining as that would be for me, I don't want the poor children having nightmares. You know, the kids we're supposed to be making happy today? Yeah, those kids, so shut the hell up and get moving before _you_ have to explain to them why they aren't going to be getting their party, mmkay?"

If Cloud hadn't been the slightest bit proud of his brother's new assertive attitude, he would have been severely pissed at the fact that the normally easy-going brunette was talking back to him and threatening him. As it was, he was proud (in his own fucked up way), so he let the insult slide, choosing instead to being meticulously spreading tablecloths featuring dancing witches, vampires, and werewolves over any surface that would not suffer dropped food and melted candy gladly.

And Riku, well, Riku just shut up quickly, not wanting to get on Sora's bad side within a week of getting off it. Sparing a slight glare in the direction of his crush's blonde brother he set about threading string through a collection of rubber bats Sora wanted to eventually hang in the entrance hall silently, internally planning to get back at Cloud and Leon for forcing Sora (and him by proxy) to set up the stupid party against his will. Never mind that no one was forcing _him_ to be there.

"Roxas… That was my last one… You didn't have to _steal_ it. I would have shared." Axel's loud whine echoed through the entrance hall and all in the living room looked up when the red-head and his boyfriend entered, Roxas looking smug and Axel two seconds away from breaking out a puppy dog pout. "And besides, you've never liked them before, why start now?"

"I just wanted to see what it is that has you so obsessed about them." Roxas responded with a shrug, ignoring the sudden predatory gleam in both of his brother's eyes. "Though it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

"I swear to god… If you have somehow managed to give my brother your lung-blackening habit, I will eat your eyes myself, not to mention set Leon on your remains." Cloud's glare seemed to back up his statement, though the amount of fear Axel was showing was negligible, almost as though he wasn't afraid of Cloud… Well, that was going to have to be changed before the day was over.

"And then I will burn all remaining traces and give them to Mother to do with them as she will." Sora threatened, sending his twin a stern look that seemed out of place on his friendly face. "I am assuming copious amounts of holy water will be involved."

"Dude, Mom's an atheist, Sora." Roxas dropped the box that Cloud had given him with a loud thump on a side table and began sorting through its contents. "I don't think she'd appreciate coming in close contact with a holy object, and I stole his last cherry licorice. No need to break out the weaponry, children."

Cloud shrugged. "Whatever. I'm gonna go outside and set up the arch for the entry way."

The four younger men watched as the blonde grabbed an armload of tinsel and stalked out of the room, Sora and Roxas turning to exchange meaningful looks once their brother was out of sight.

"So they _are_ mad at each other." And then, when Riku and Axel looked confused Sora went on. "They were signing at each other when I got here, Riku you were still parking the car. I don't know exactly what they were on about, but Leon looked pissed about something and there was a minute where I thought they were going to break out their fists and settle whatever was bothering them violently."

"They were _signing_? And now Cloud's acting like Leon?" Roxas shuddered when his twin nodded. "It must have been pretty bad. I haven't seen them sign in forever. Not since Mom cornered them about a five thousand dollar maintenance charge Cloud brought home for Fenrir. That one ended with Leon receiving a broken nose and Cloud becoming the proud new owner of five stitches in his upper arm."

"And I haven't seen them 'sign' ever." Axel scratched his head in confusion. "What the hell are you two going on about?"

"Sign language." Riku answered as he continued his task of stringing bats. "They learned it like eight years ago because Sora and Roxas were getting on their nerves with their secret twin language, and they wanted something they could do where no one would know what they were talking about, mainly for the times when they were fighting didn't want their mom worrying about them. It kind of evolved from there to the point where they spent two whole months without talking before their mom finally threatened never to take them out driving again when they were fifteen, at which point they stopped using it as much so as not to piss her off."

"Roxas and I tried to learn it once, but they changed it and like added their own signs or something because we were never able to figure it out all the way, though we do manage to get most of the bad words at times." Sora grinned. "They had very dirty mouths for fifteen year olds."

"Now they only sign when they get mad enough that they don't trust their words not to get out of hand." Roxas finished up the explanation as he began sorting the limp balloons into piles by color. "Or when they, once again, don't want Mom to be worried about them."

"Sounds more complicated than it should be." Axel muttered as he helped himself to a pile of orange balloons, leaving Roxas the black ones. "But, then again, this is Cloud and Leon we are talking about. It's like a law in your family that if they begin to make the slightest amount of sense, then we've got problem and they have to go change everything up."

Sora and Roxas laughed. "That sounds about right."

"Hey!" Everyone looked up from what they were doing at Riku's yell, a black balloon shooting out across the room due to Roxas' startled yelp. "Leon went to get doughnuts!"

"Yes, Riku. That _is_ what Cloud said. Nice to know that you do pay attention to him from time to time." Sora answered cautiously.

"Oh damn!" Now it was Axel's turn to be stared at like he was going insane. "I can't believe we missed our opportunity!"

"If you two are thinking of doing what I think you're think of doing… Then it's your funeral and I refuse to step in and save your lives." Roxas stated and went back to his balloon blowing.

"Riku… following Leon on any day is a bad idea. Hell, being around Leon on most days is a bad idea, but since we don't really have much of a _choice_, there's nothing I can do about it. Blatantly following him in an attempt to find out where he gets his doughnuts, that goes far beyond bad idea and is well over a mile into death wish territory." Sora sighed as his friend merely shrugged and continued on with his work. "You're going to die. My best friend is going to die, and he won't even acknowledge it. What am I going to do with you?"

"I'll tell you exactly what you're about to do: You're going to shut up and work before we end up having to worry about Leon's rage much sooner than usual because he got back before we had this living room set up." Roxas warned as he caught his breath. "Then I suggest you sit back and enjoy the show because Axel isn't going to give up, and thus Riku won't either because he listens to my idiot of a boyfriend more than is healthy for him."

"Aw… Roxas… There's no need to be a bully!" Axel chimed in from where he was slumped lazily on a couch half-assing blowing up balloons in an effort to impress Leon enough so that he wouldn't hurt him, while not actually working more than absolutely necessary.

"The day you stop being an idiot is the day I stop making fun of you." Roxas said and flicked his boyfriend on the back of his head. "And blow the damn things up right. I don't know much about normal orphans, but I don't think they appreciate droopy balloons. And the orphan I do know, while being so far from normal it scares people, still does not like them either and is probably just waiting for an excuse to expend excess anger on someone Mom won't notice going missing."

Axel, while having a variety of witty comebacks, wisely held his tongue for the first time in his life and began blowing up the balloons properly. As much as he secretly enjoyed getting on Leon's last nerve, if the man was already angry then it wouldn't be worth the hospital bill.

The four men worked in silence for a while before Riku finally broke the semi-comfortable moment.

"When _is_ Leon coming back?"

* * *

A bell jingled happily as the door to the Estharian Delights Bakery and Sex Shop swung open in a gush of cooling fall air. Well, so the sex shop part wasn't really advertised for the world to see. That didn't mean it hadn't been pumping inappropriately shaped baked goods into the community for years.

"Leon! Long time no see!" The brunette cringed at the overly-enthusiastic greeting. He took a quick side step and watched in amusement as the flying blur that constituted the main owner of the shop came to an ungraceful stop on the floor behind him. He looked up at the stoic man standing over him and flipped his longer bang out of his eyes before sarcastically saying. "Nice to see you're as cheerful as ever."

"Nice to see you never fail to _not_ learn from your mistakes as you insist on attempting to hug me whenever I walk through the door only the be met with the same result each and every time." The look on Leon's face showed his displeasure, but he offered up a hand to the almost girlish man in order to help him back to his feet.

"Laguna… What have I told you about jumping on the customers…? Oh, hello Leon, I thought you were someone else." Leon waved to the dark-skinned man who had appeared from the backroom at his friend's startled yelp. Enter the shop's second owner. "You here to make the doughnuts for the kids?

Leon nodded as he helped Laguna to his feet. "Yeah, and, if it's not a problem with you, I'd like to make an extra batch for Cloud, the raspberry filled ones, please."

"Something wrong with you two?" Laguna asked as he bounced happily back behind the counter with Leon following behind him. Working with the younger man for years had taught Laguna that he only requested doughnuts for Cloud when the blonde needed saving from something (normally an excursion or tutoring session with his brothers), on or as close to anniversaries as possible, and when the two were fighting. Since there was a very low possibility of Cloud needing saving considering his mother and brothers had stopped forcing him to do things after he hit the age of twenty, and their anniversary had been on the fifteenth, Laguna was willing to bet on the third option, as much as he hated to do so.

The brunette sighed and nodded. "As much as I hate to admit it, yeah. Mom's not doing too well again and Cloud's started paying her medication bills. When I told him that I would help, he refused. We fought, he left, and I said some things I probably shouldn't have as he went. Now I'm trying to at least get back on speaking terms with him. End of story."

"I highly doubt doughnuts are going to do the trick." Kiros said skeptically.

"And you have never met Cloud before." Leon pointed out. "Offering doughnuts is his international sign for peace and a truce. Now whether he'll still be talking to me after he's done eating is up in the air, but he'll at least say 'thank you' and stick around long enough to listen."

A loud crash heralded the arrival of the third owner of the bakery. Leon looked up from where he was rummaging around under the counter for a recipe he wanted to wave at the rather large man wearing a pink, frilly apron that had come bursting out of the swinging stainless steel doors that led to the food preparation area. "Hello, Ward."

The other man spared him the briefest of nods before turning and moving his hands so quickly they were almost a blur in the general direction of where Laguna and Kiros were busy pushing each other out of the way in order to scramble over the counter. When he noticed his friends weren't looking at him he sighed deeply and turned back to Leon.

'_Why do I put up with them?' _Ward asked with his hands.

Leon shrugged and lightly touched his right cheek before flicking his hand outward, effectively saying: _'I don't know'_

Ward sighed again and pointed in the general direction of where his friends had managed to launch themselves over the counter and were now tangled in a writhing pile of limbs and curse words. He made a fist and punched his right index finger and then placed his flattened hand on the center of his chest and rubbed it in a circle. _'Hit them, please.'_

"Hey, idiots!" The two fighting men looked up to find Leon and Ward staring at them with bored looks on their faces.

'_You're lucky. I wanted him to hit you.' _And then Ward's hands were flying almost too fast for Leon to keep up with, which, considering that whether or not Laguna and Kiros had or hadn't stolen the last of the white icing for naughty purposes wasn't his business, didn't bother him all that much.

"Damn it, Laguna! He's mute not deaf!" Leon looked over from where he was scanning the recipe in front of him to make sure it was really what he wanted at Kiros' yell. Apparently Laguna had said something not very nice about his mute friend, once again forgetting that just because one couldn't _speak_; it didn't mean one couldn't _hear_.

Leon sighed as Laguna stammered out an apology. Had Laguna not made the same mistake before (many, many times before), he might have prompted himself to feel a bit sorry for his fellow brunette. But, considering it was Laguna, and the man didn't know meaning of 'shut your mouth, you dumb idiot', he felt no sympathy in the slightest and made his way through the steel double doors and into the industrial-sized kitchen.

He had already gathered together the ingredients necessary to make the children's doughnuts when the double doors swung open once more to admit the three previously arguing owners. They each had their own looks of concern on their faces, petty squabble tucked away for another time. Leon bit back another sigh. Damn his big mouth. Now he was going to get a lecture about love and never going to bed angry or some equally boring shit.

"Leon…" Laguna started and Leon quickly jumped in, hoping to nip the unwanted conversation in the bud.

"Look, I know I messed up. He knows I messed up. This isn't going to be something that will go away on its own like most of our fights. Even if it would, it will come up again. Mom's only going to get worse from here after all. This is something we are going to have to resolve by, god forbid, _talking_ to each other."

"Which means I sure as hell don't want to talk about it with you three as well. So can we skip the disappointed lecture and one of you can help me make the damned doughnuts?" Leon looked at the trio of flabbergasted men standing before him expectantly, almost hopefully.

"Your mom's really doing all that bad, huh?" Laguna was predictably the first one to break the silence.

Leon nodded. "There's not really a 'perfectly healthy' stage to this disease. Apparently she caught some kind of lung infection last week which led to her doctors discovering her meds weren't working as well as they used to. They've got her on some new, much more expensive, cocktail in hopes that it will give her a bit more time as a semi-healthy, functioning individual, but it's not looking too good this time around."

And then, after a pause so pregnant it was practically in labor…

"…Cloud's blaming himself again."

The three men each reacted at the exact same time, numerous curses and dirty signs reverberating through the room. Leon cursed his traitorous mouth for the second time that day.

"But it never _was_ his fault! It was nobody's fault!" Laguna shouted shrilly, his friends nodding in agreement in the background.

Leon began mixing ingredients in a large, metal bowl, biting back a sarcastic comment in favor of actually explaining everything. In for an inch, in for a mile. "Try telling him that. He's the guiltiest man on the whole damned planet. He thought it was his job to protect Mom after his dad left and he thinks that things would have gone differently had he been there to guard her." Leon sighed wearily and resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose with one flour-covered hand. "What he thinks a seven year old boy could have done against a full grown man still remains a mystery to me, but he doesn't care. His mother's rape and subsequent deadly illness was his fault for not being there to save her and that's not something I've ever been able to change. Hell, if anything, it's _my_ fault. If I hadn't insisted on going to the orphanage instead of spending the night at their house, she wouldn't have been out there walking in the dark in the first place."

"I swear to Shiva that if you start blaming yourself, too, I'm holding you down and allowing Laguna to hug you until you can't breathe anymore, boy." Kiros threatened and Ward cracked his knuckles in a show of support.

"No need, no need." Laguna interrupted, waving them off absentmindedly. Leon pounded a fist into his dough a little more forcefully than was warranted. "Leon doesn't really blame himself. He wouldn't be here if he did. He'd be chained to his mother in a blind and slightly humorous attempt to redeem himself by double protecting her now."

'Damn.' Leon thought. 'How the hell does he know me so damned well? Not even _Cloud_ knows I used to feel guiltier than him.'

And as much as he outwardly claimed to hate the odd connection he and the very immature older man had, he secretly was so glad to have finally found someone that wasn't Cloud who understood him without him having to come out and explain everything he was thinking in intricate detail. It was something he had come to appreciate in the annoying man, something that made confiding in him seem like the most natural thing to do, even with Leon's general distrust of people trying to hold him back.

"Laguna…" Kiros sounded tired. "You know what? Whatever. Leon obviously doesn't want to talk about this anymore than he already has." At this Leon nodded in relief. He'd actually said more than he'd wanted to because he couldn't stand to keep his mouth shut when he knew the trio was worrying about him. It had been that way ever since he was a scared boy of fifteen who only knew that his mother was sick and they needed more munny to make her better.

Ward moved his fingers into the shape of a 'd', shrugging before he placed them into the 'o' he'd made with his other hand, twisting it around a few times. _'Doughnuts?'_

The men quickly snapped to work as Leon sank back deeply into his own thoughts, not willing to admit that he felt better about talking about the things that had been bothering him.

He was so deep in through that he didn't notice the understanding look on Laguna's face as the older man watched him. Nor catching the flicker of guilt that flashed across his always expressive face a few seconds later before he turned away to return to looking after the front of the store when the bell jingled once more, signaling the arrival of a real customer.

* * *

"You brought me doughnuts?" Translation: Are you seriously apologizing or are you just trying to cover up your stupid mistakes in hopes that it might make me come home again?

Too bad the group of young men watching from behind a slightly cracked living room window didn't have a Leon/Cloud to regular human translator. All they could see was Cloud looking annoyed at the peace offering Leon had brought.

"Yes, I brought you doughnuts." Translation: Of course I'm trying to apologize, but if you're going to be an ass about it, I don't think I want to anymore.

And now Leon was looking pissed. The eavesdroppers were starting to wonder if someone wasn't going to have to go to the hospital after all.

"I didn't ask for you to bring me anything." Translation: I don't want for you to apologize if you don't mean it.

The eavesdroppers began making a plan of action were punches to be actually thrown, something that seemed to be only a matter of time now.

"You didn't have to ask. I wanted to do it." Translation: I'm not trying to mess with you here. I want to apologize and at least go back to being friends.

Axel resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall from boredom while Roxas placed a warning hand on his arm in case he should think running out and interrupting the conversation from sheer boredom was a good idea. Riku and Sora yawned, recognizing the sudden absence of tension in the conversation outside.

"You shouldn't have wanted to." Translation: I guess part of it kind of was my fault. You didn't have to go through all this trouble for me.

Axel's eye began twitching. He'd never had the longest attention span to begin with and now that there was no promise of immediate bloodshed, he found he didn't care about the end of their stupid argument.

"Well, I did, so get over it." Translation: I shouldn't have called you a 'fat-assed tightwad with an inferiority complex.' Please don't make me sleep on the floor.

Even when they were agreeing, they were sarcastic and irritated, the eavesdroppers thought to themselves while Axel tried in vain to wiggle out of Roxas' surprisingly strong arms.

"I'm going to eat them." Translation: You are forgiven.

Riku gave up and went back to stringing crêpe paper along the windowsill. Sora gave up and helped him. Roxas kept his death grip on his boyfriend. Axel wished he hadn't picked a stronger-than-he-looked boyfriend.

"That is why I brought them. I didn't anticipate you would like to frame them or something equally idiotic and wasteful." Translation: You're an idiot and we're going to have a real conversation sometime soon and you're not going to be able to get out of it this time.

Cloud laughed and Leon joined in as they began splitting the raspberry filled doughnuts. Cloud's favorite.

And things were suddenly back to the way they had been before.

Axel sighed and turned away from the window. "Well, that was anticlimactic. The least they could have done was punch each other, maybe draw some blood, but no. They just had to yammer on about doughnuts and boringness. I quit this family."

"You can't quit. I'm not ready to let you go yet." Roxas rolled his shoulders and stretched as he went back to the tedious process of untangling a cord of jack 'o lantern lights. "You can only leave when I say so."

"Geeze, Roxas. You wanna brand him, too, so everyone will know he's your bitch?" Riku offered up sarcastically.

Roxas sneered. "If I thought he wouldn't cry like a little baby and go hide behind his mother, I would. Sadly enough, that's exactly what he'd do. It kind of ruins his whole tough guy attitude. As funny as it would undoubtedly be, I don't feel like being disillusioned as of yet. Give me a few more years to let him get boring first."

"Aw, Roxy! Don't be like that!" Axel pouted. "If you wanna brand me I'll take it like a man. Anything for you, baby."

"I'm going to pretend I never heard that and when I walk back in all four of you are going to be working and not saying inappropriate things where children play." Leon covered his eyes and took a step back, ignoring Cloud sniggering in the background, and opened his eyes as he walked back in to find his family and their tag-alongs running around trying to get the last of the spider webs and lights in place. "Good boys. Now the doughnuts are in the kitchen and the pizza should be here any minute. Matron called ten minutes ago to let me know that they were making an unplanned sno-cone stop, but that they should be here within the hour, so you can start taking turns changing into your costumes is you want."

"Where's Mom?" Sora asked from his position on the floor untangling cottony spider webs, just now beginning to notice the absence of his mother.

Cloud and Leon exchange an impassive glance that shouldn't have shown anything, but with Sora and Roxas knowing them as well as anyone could, their guilt showed through as clearly as if they had spoken aloud.

"No! She would have told us! _Leon_!"

"Damn it, Cloud! What's wrong?"

Both twins were distressed beyond measure if their simultaneous shouts were anything to go by. In fact, Sora looked close to tears while Roxas had a downright evil looking scowl on his face, his glittering blue eyes glowing in anger at the disease process that was keeping his normally cheerful mother down.

Cloud sighed and Leon shifted his weight from leg to leg uncomfortably, neither one wanting to say what was on their minds. Finally it was Cloud that took pity on his younger brothers' concern and broke the silence wearily.

"She was put on a new cocktail last week. Her old one… It wasn't working anymore." Now Sora did begin to cry and Cloud looked away, not wanting to see the pain on the youngest's face. Roxas' fists curled at his hips and he bit his lips harshly, mere millimeters away from drawing blood. "The doctors said she would be better by Thanksgiving, so… She didn't think it was worth worrying the two of you. She didn't want your grades to suffer because of her."

"How much do her new meds cost?" Roxas asked as he joined Riku to sling a comforting arm around his twin. Leave it to Roxas to get to the true heart of the matter now that he knew what had most likely been bothering Cloud and Leon earlier. While he didn't know the exact extent of his mother's munny woes, he did know that she wasn't making much munny and had two children she was supposedly supporting in college, though he had his own suspicions and theories about that. A new experimental cocktail sounded expensive to him.

Cloud shrugged, the picture of innocence for once. Never let it be said that he couldn't act if the occasion called for it. "I'm assuming the same as the old ones. She didn't mention any higher costs, if that's what you're asking."

The look in Roxas' eyes said he didn't fully believe his older brother but he didn't push the issue, instead choosing to put his full attention to calming his younger twin, Sora being on the verge of hyperventilation. Axel walked over to the small group, wrapping his own arms around his boyfriend, having accurately read the tension in Roxas' body to mean that he wanted to be comforted as well, even if he would have rather cut off his own arm than admit it.

Leon and Cloud hovered awkwardly in the doorway, caught between wanting to comfort their siblings and wanting to turn their backs to the embarrassing display of weakness in favor of calming their own frayed nerves. Neither emotion won out so they hovered in the doorway wishing for something to come along and distract them enough so they wouldn't feel guilty for leaving their family members alone in their despair. Riku and Axel seemed to have it all under control as it was. They had never really been all that into sharing feelings anyways.

The arrival of the pizza man turned out to be their salvation as Leon scampered off to deal with calculating and giving out the required munny, a mechanical task he did well and that did not require thinking on his part. He found mindless numbers to be highly calming in an emotionally stressed frame of mind. Cloud watched his friend go, turning to where Sora was drying his eyes on the back of his sleeve and motioning for his brothers and their friends to go get changed.

The four men complied, with the twins looking back at the last second to see Cloud bend down to pick up a fallen rubber bat from off the floor, an almost unreadable, but fairly distressed look in his usually vibrant blue eyes. They shot each other a look of mutual understanding. Leon had been clearly upset by the situation with their mother. And for Cloud to be showing _any_ emotion meant that something was terribly wrong, and they were now resolved to get to the bottom of it.

For their mother, they would do anything.

* * *

"And what the hell are you supposed to be?"

Cloud sighed internally as he felt the scrutinizing gaze of one of his friends slide over his choice of costume for what felt like the thousandth time that night. Flicking one of his spiked higher than usual bangs out of his face he sent the newest question asker a blank look of disdain for her question, with Tifa ignoring it in favor of sticking a finger through one of the holes in his crimson cape.

He hefted his bandaged-wrapped (for the safety of others) sword into a better position on his shoulder, knocking the fake tin armor there almost out of place and sent the distracted woman a glare Leon would have been proud of to get her to take a step out of his personal bubble. All it succeeded in doing was drawing attention to the one leathery batwing Leon had forced onto him earlier in the day. A batwing he had been trying without success to get off whenever Leon wasn't looking, only to have the brunette request Riku's help in pinning him down to have it replaced as soon as he noticed it missing. Clenching his bronze gauntleted fist in irritation at the busty girl's curiosity he resigned himself to answering her question, more to draw attention away from his attire than any desire for satiating said curiosity.

"I'm a lead videogame hero obviously. And you?"

Tifa stepped back and stuck her tongue out of the agitated man. She straightened the halo that was hanging precariously off one of her red devil horns on the top of her head and jutted one of her hips out to the side, her white leather skin-tight bodysuit creaking at the motion. "I'm obviously a corrupted angel."

Cloud sighed internally and thanked any deity bored enough to listen that she'd been busy earlier in the day and had declined his invitation to join them at the orphanage for the children's party, a party that had gone off without a hitch once Sora and Roxas had calmed down enough to properly enjoy themselves. The blonde didn't think the innocent children (or their strict Matron) would have been able to handle the sight of the immensely well-endowed woman running around in leather so tight it was practically a second skin.

"Or a slut." Leon entered the conversation, offering a plastic cup filled with punch to the now pouting blonde. Tifa stuck her tongue out at him, too, for good measure.

"Hey, it's Halloween. If I wanna dress like a slut, then that's my prerogative so neener." Cloud chuckled and had to give her that. With her boobs, it was hard to find anything that didn't make her look a tad on the cheap side, not that he would have been so brave as to say that to her face. She was a black belt. She punched hard. The brunette martial artist turned her inquisitive gaze on Leon now, all thoughts of Cloud's strange costume gone in favor of taking in the leathered up outfit Leon had chosen. "And you are…?"

"Damn sexy." Leon stated plainly and Cloud had to admit that he agreed. Maybe it was something about the way the black leather pants hugged the curves of his ass just right, with the four lightly looped belts drawing attention to it every time he moved, or the slightly too large paper thin white shirt that stood out underneath a black leather jacket with a soft fur collar, or his favorite silver lion's head pendant laying heavily against his toned chest. Whatever it was, Leon looked damned hot and Cloud was more than regretting his promise to keep his hands to himself for the sake of the bet.

As much as he wanted to agree and then proceed to throw Leon down and show his exactly how sexy he really was, he restrained himself, choosing instead to comment on the brunette's choice of weaponry accessory.

"Dumb gun thing, though."

"I think it is creative and deadly, thank you very much." Leon answered haughtily. Just because Cloud was still pouting about being forced into a wing he didn't want, didn't mean that he had to be jealous of Leon's gunblade creating skills. In fact, he was pretty sure that he wanted to create the weapon on a real scale it was just that good of an idea. Why hadn't anyone thought of it sooner?

"It wouldn't work in the real world. The blade would get in the way of the bullet, and you can't possibly have room for a decent powder chamber in there. Plus you aim like shit." So that's why no one had thought of it sooner. Cloud grinned at the weaker than usual glare he was receiving for his efforts at taunting. "Face it, Leon. That thing goes against the laws of physics and rationality."

While Leon would have loved to point out that Cloud's own sword would be far too heavy for practical use, he knew the Buster was real, and that Cloud was more than capable of using it skillfully, having been on the receiving end of the lighter than it looked weapon in many training bouts at the martial arts center downtown. Damn the blonde and his deceptively lean build.

Instead he offered up his own sarcastic comment. "At least I'm not wandering around with a poorly concealed batwing sticking out of my cape, now am I?"

The only thing that saved Leon from having a sudden re-acquaintance with the Buster sword was the sudden arrival of Riku and his older brother, said older brother looking more out of place than anyone else, what with his skin-tight leather pants, and coat, which had been left open about midway to reveal a very nicely muscled chest to the world. Sephiroth had apparently opted to go with the one-winged option as well for whatever reason, though he had decided on a feathery black angel's wing that was unfurled to the extent of its hidden wiring, leaving many people not staring in awe at the gorgeous man scrambling out of the way so as not to be knocked to the floor but the ungainly false appendage. Although Sephiroth seemed to give it a grace that was almost inhuman as he glided purposely through the crowded quad, completely ignoring his younger brother's complaints in favor of seeking out his favorite blonde. Leave it to Seph to have the ability to stand out at a crowded Halloween party where costumes were mandatory to get through the door.

"Hey, Seph." The silver-haired man turned at the sound of Cloud's familiar voice, what could only have been described as the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, a smile that immediately disappeared once Leon's presence registered in his mind. "What are you supposed to be?"

"A One-Winged Angel. All capital letters. I'm special" Sephiroth's grin returned, a little more on the gloating side than the happy one when he noticed Cloud's own wing. "And what do we have here? If you wanted to be my One-Winged Devil all you had to do was ask."

"What are you doing here, Sephiroth?" Leon spit out, now regretting his juvenile love of forcing Cloud into uncomfortable situations.

"Visiting my lovely brother on this All Hallows Eve Night." Riku sighed and rolled his eyes at that. Sephiroth hadn't come to see him, that much was certain given that the younger boy had only found his brother by mistake and had been ignored by said brother up until that very moment when suddenly his presence was wanted so he wouldn't look like a love-sick idiot. A desperate love-sick idiot in Riku's opinion. Honestly, it was obvious Cloud was meant for Leon. Why his idiot of an older brother couldn't figure that out never ceased to astound poor Riku to the point where he didn't bother wasting headache medication worrying about it any longer.

Tifa looked over at where Riku was pouting at the ground, his fake blood-smeared light blue scrubs standing out in the bright spotlight that was currently shining down onto the dance floor as every college student within a twenty mile radius danced like there was no tomorrow. He dejectedly pushed the gauze bandage covering his left eye up so he could see better, hoping that if Leon chose to punch Sephiroth (which it looked like was only going to be a matter of time if Sephiroth continued to act like a possessive jerk about someone that wasn't even his to be possessive about) the added range of vision would give him enough leverage to get out of the resulting brawl in one piece for once.

"Zombie?" She grinned when he nodded. "Oh, and a crazed escaped doctor type, too. That's sexy. You got your eye on someone in the crowd tonight?"

Riku sighed and shook his head. He did, in fact, have his eye on someone. He'd had his eye on Sora ever since the day they'd met, but had chosen to keep his crush close to his chest in an attempt to not to run away the only friend he'd found that didn't run screaming when Sephiroth showed up on the scene, an occurrence that had sent many prospective friends from his younger days running in fright never to be seen again. The appearance of Axel and his success with Roxas (who had been twice as anti-love as he was now that Axel had finally worn him down) had prompted him to reveal his hidden feelings, only to be rebuffed again and again by the strangely mature younger boy.

"Don't be sad, Riku, man, he'll give in when it comes down to the end." Riku and Tifa looked up to find Yuffie bouncing off to their left, having arrived unannounced into the conversation with much more stealth than she usually possessed. She was dressed as traditional ninja (no surprise there) complete with a black ninja mask to cover the lower half of her face, an accessory she had pushed down to be better capable of pushing herself into conversations that weren't hers to be sticking her nose into. She winked at the downtrodden young man. "Don't worry about it. With your level of sex appeal, it's a wonder he's held out this long. Keep your chin up!"

Riku looked out over the heads of the writhing crowd to find where Sora was talking to Roxas and Axel, both twins done up as traditional horror movie monsters with Sora going as an immensely adorable vampire and Roxas going as a cuter than average mummy. Both brothers had their startling blue eyes (a trait all the Strife's seemed to have inherited, with the exception of Leon, who wasn't really a Strife anyways) lined in heavy black eyeliner and Roxas had dusted some pale powder on the parts of his face that were showing through the dollar store gauze bandages he'd wrapped around his body. Axel had chosen to go as a biker, which basically meant he dressed up in his most ratted jeans and threw a chain onto his belt loop. Axel was nothing if not lazy.

"Don't be all depressed!" Riku's attention was quickly drawn back to the bouncing ninja beside him to find her looking at him with concern.

Riku shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I'm not depressed, and I'm not giving up either."

"That's the spirit!" Yuffie clapped her hands together in excitement before throwing her arms around her friend. "You show him who's boss."

Tifa chuckled at the enthusiasm. "Now if only we can inspire some other stubborn fools around here to suck it up and grab some courage to do what needs to be done."

"I don't think courage is going to be an issue tonight." Riku stated sarcastically as the group turned to watch the impromptu glaring contest that had sprung up between Leon and Sephiroth, with Cloud in the middle looking like he was about to knock both of his friends into the next century. "I think the real problem is going to be a pair of violent idiots who don't know when to back to down before the cops show up."

"Oh, _hell_ no I'm not going to deal with this infantile pissing contest tonight. I'm out." Riku and Tifa laughed as Yuffie waved and bounced off, most likely to find Selphie since the other girl was the only one hyper enough to handle keeping Yuffie entertained for more than a few minutes.

"Something tells me this happens often." Tifa said conversationally as the tension between Sephiroth and Leon rose to near physical levels in front of them.

"More like every time they meet in a vaguely social situation." Riku answered bitterly. Would it really kill his brother to be civil to someone he disliked from time to time? Especially when the person he wasn't being civil to just so happened to be the adopted brother of the boy Riku wanted to date. "To be perfectly honest, I don't know why their confrontations have become so extreme. They used to tolerate each other, but when Seph went away to college something changed between the three of them. Now Leon would rather break his shins than look at him and Sephiroth shares the sentiment exactly, and poor Cloud always ends up caught in the middle."

"I know what it is!" Tifa chirped happily. "Sephiroth likes Cloud, which makes Leon jealous, since he obviously hasn't come to terms with the fact that he's secretly in love with his best friend. And Cloud's just wanting to preserve both his friendships because he's actually a kind guy underneath the cool front he projects."

Riku looked at the long-haired brunette with an expression of almost reverence on his face. "Wow… Now that I think about it like that… It all kind of makes sense. Ha, Sora's going to owe me big time. Fuck yes!"

"Sora doesn't think Leon and Cloud secretly have a thing for each other?" Tifa asked, knowing exactly what Riku was insinuating without having to ask.

"Neither does Roxas." Riku supplied cheerfully, happier now that he was able to put his finger on exactly what was going on between his brother and Leon. "But hey, it doesn't matter what they think if Leon is feeling threatened by Sephiroth. Leon never protects Cloud; the mere fact that he is doing so now would suggest there is something a bit more than brotherly love and respect floating around. Suck it, Roxas!"

"Leon generally respects Cloud's ability to handle his own love life…" Tifa mumbled, more to herself than Riku. "But he doesn't trust Cloud where Sephiroth is concerned... I'm worried…"

"Don't be." Riku cut in quickly to relieve his friend's anxiety. "Maybe he's more worried about Sephiroth not keeping his distance than Cloud giving into my brother's advances. That's how it is with Axel in a way. Leon doesn't trust that Axel's not going to do something stupid and end up dragging down Roxas by association."

"Perhaps…" Tifa answered, smiling slightly to hide the concern that was nagging at the back of her head. "In any case, I think we should be working together here. Sephiroth's your brother, you can get close to him and hold him back long enough for the rest of us to get either Leon or Cloud to admit to having feelings for the other."

Riku looked confused. "Who's 'us'?"

"Oh, I forgot you didn't know yet." Tifa giggled and colored a little bit. "I've kind of gotten a group together in an attempt to make sure Leon and Cloud end up together before the end of the year no matter what… Right now we're kind of small. It's just Rikku, Yuna, Kairi, Naminé, and me, but we're hoping to track down some others who want to help."

"And why do we need a group of people to ensure Leon and Cloud's realization of their undying love before the end of the school year? The way things are looking, they're going to end up together by Christmas on their own if the way they acted at Zack's wedding is any indication." Riku pointed out. "I've never seen Cloud hanging onto one particular person when he was drunk the way he hung onto Leon that night in all the years I've known him, and I've known him for like forever. And Leon hates people touching him, even Cloud. Him tolerating such behavior is another clue."

"That's all well and good, but if I remember correctly, there are quite a few people who have a decent amount of munny riding on them ending the year as nothing more than friends." Tifa sighed and leant back against a nearby wall. "Rinoa's already got herself a group of about ten students, Reno and Seifer included, who are cooking up plots to make sure that something even as innocent as an accidental sexual innuendo doesn't pass between the two of them for the rest of the year."

"So what?" Riku shrugged, clearly unconcerned. "Leon and Cloud have been lying to each other about their feelings for years. I'm telling you, it's going to happen, and it's going to happen soon and there's nothing Rinoa can do about it."

"Maybe you didn't hear me correctly the first time. _Reno_ is included, and _Seifer_." Tifa responded, watching as Riku's eyes suddenly went wide as she put emphasis on the names of the two well-known troublemakers. "You know… Reno's the red-headed idiot that's been friends with Sephiroth since forever and who has more loyalty to your brother than anyone other than Rude? The same red-head idiot that kept _Axel_, hard-headed and proud to a fault Axel, away from Roxas for a year before finally letting him go because holding him back got boring? I know you can't still be thinking that there's nothing to worry about anymore. As for Seifer, if it means Leon isn't going to get something he really wants, he'll go to any lengths to make sure any plan Reno can cook up will come to pass."

"Speaking of Axel… You want his help, too?" Riku quickly jumped to offer his friend's services, knowing that if Axel were to find out that his cousin was unintentionally plotting against him, he would want to know about it.

"You think he'd want to?" Tifa asked hopefully. Having Axel on their side would be extremely helpful if it came down to a bloody battle.

"Oh, I _know_ he'd want to." Riku answered smugly. "He's gotta do Roxas' notes next year on top of giving up 200 munny if we lose. He'd be an idiot more than deserving of his fate if he refuses."

Tifa nodded in agreement as both adults turned to look back at the tense stare down taking place between Leon and Sephiroth. "Something tells me this is going to be harder than it really should be."

And, try as hard as he could to think differently, Riku found that all he could do was agree.

* * *

And, standing completely unnoticed by the fairly intoxicated crowd, Luxord was watching his bet's progress from the safety of the shadows. Cloud and Leon were close, yes, closer than they ever had been and that was becoming a bit of a problem in the gambler's mind. What had started out as an impossible impracticality was fast becoming a reality, something that was not to be allowed to come to pass.

He had meant for this to be a fun bet, with very embarrassing ramifications for all involved, not a matchmaking game. At the rate Cloud and Leon were going, they wouldn't last until Christmas before falling into bed with each other, an occurrence that would spell doom for his aspirations of attaining the glory of creating a school year long bet. He could not allow his success to be taken from him this time.

And so he had bribed Zexion to implant that idea of forming a group set on getting Cloud's interest away from Leon, and the schemer and had done very well, proving that taking a two year absence from his mind games hadn't dulled the sharp wit of the younger man. It felt good to finally have his right hand man back in action.

And dragging Reno and Seifer into the equation was something he most definitely approved of. Zexion was to be more than applauded in bringing about that team-up.

Tifa was to be commended as well. He hadn't planned for there to be a counter group to his anti-hook up team, but now that there was, he couldn't believe he hadn't been the one to think of it, which in a way he had been, however inadvertently. How was he supposed to know Demxy would turn out to have half a brain and a vengeance streak a mile long, or that in bringing Zexion firmly back into the game, he'd also bring out these hidden qualities in the usually carefree musician? To be perfectly honest, he hadn't known Demxy cared enough to become involved to the point where he was prodding Tifa in the direction of forming a pro-get together group.

Oh yes, things were slowly beginning to turn in his direction. Luxord grinned evilly, wishing he had thought to pull something of this magnitude long ago. Maybe when Sephiroth had still been around to be a key player instead of a side piece that walked in only long enough to cause trouble before disappearing back into the real world.

No use crying over spilt milk, he thought to himself as he watched the students interacting with each other, unable to hide an amused smirk when he caught sight of Reno, his lower half wrapped in a towel as he ran through the gathering with two cops on his tail. Apparently going to a college sponsored party dressed (or not quite so dressed as the case seemed to be) as a streaker was something that could get you sent to jail, or at least land you with a heavy fine after spending a night in holding.

He turned his gaze to find where Rinoa and Seifer were dancing in the center of the dance floor, neither one suspecting that they weren't really in control, though why the usually peaceful brunette suddenly didn't like the thought of Leon having a significant other escaped him. Perhaps it was beneficial him to get to the bottom of that as well. Zexion would have a field day with such juicy information. It was be like an early Christmas present to him.

Deciding to add discovering Rinoa's sudden fervent rejection of Leon belonging to anyone but her to his list of things to accomplish before Thanksgiving, Luxord pulled his dark cloak tighter around him and slunk away from the strobe lights and jubilant student body.

Second semester was going to be so much fun that Luxord didn't think he had it in him to wait…

* * *

_**A/N: **And this had now apparently turned into 'How many Final Fantasy characters not in Kingdom Hearts can Scout crush into this story'. Honestly, first Reno (which had been planned because no story of causing trouble can be complete without him, though his role has expanded exponentially since this whole fiasco began much to my delight) and Vincent (who is so cool it's a crime that he's **not** already in KH), and then suddenly there's Zack, Irvine, Genesis, and Angeal (who are coming back sooner or later because I love them all to itty, bitty pieces). And now we've got Kiros, Laguna (who was planned from the begining... I know gasp, there **is **a plan!) and Ward. Oh, and Jecht's coming around sooner or later considering I don't think it's very fair to leave poor Tidus without a dad. And that's not even counting those waiting in the wings that just haven't wormed their way in yet..._

_Damn me and my love of obscure side characters..._

_Anyways, any and all reviews are appreciated and longed for... Lemons in the next chappie for reals this time, yo!_


	5. Day EightyNine: PreThanksgiving Fun Time

_**A/N: **Yay! I'm updating EARLY!! You can thank the fact that my teacher has stopped hovering over my computer in class anymore so now I can pretend to be typing my notes while actually writing naugty, naughty stories..._

_**WARNING!!: **There is actually a reason for this warning! I have at long last managed to crank out the long awaited (by me at least) lemon! Sooooo.... If reading about graphic man-sex isn't your cup of tea... Feel free to skip out on the juicy bits if you want... Nothing important happens during the fun bits. Wootness!_

* * *

_**Chapter Four**_

_**Day Eighty-Nine: I Do Good Deeds, Karma. Care to Throw Me a Bone From Time to Time?**_

They had been avoiding each other for weeks (a feat in and of itself considering they lived together in a tiny college dorm room not meant for avoiding people or allowing for privacy), tiptoeing delicately around the subject of their Halloween time fight as they shuffled preparations for midterms and papers, neither one managing to throw together enough courage to start the discussion they were going to have to have. It didn't help that the atmosphere around the school wasn't exactly conducive to giving the two men time to be alone, what with the students waiting around every corner hoping for a display of affection, or a sign that nothing had changed.

But they weren't at school anymore, and now that there was nothing standing in their way, Leon was beginning to have second thoughts about wanting to confront his lover about the sensitive subject of their mother's healthcare. Cloud hadn't brought it up again since the day after Halloween, and Leon was almost to the point of wanting to leave it well enough alone, however, Cloud was still being obstinate about not wanting to allow the brunette to help and that situation was something Leon found he was having trouble living with, so when they found themselves alone in their mother's house the day before Thanksgiving with no one expected for a few hours, he decided it was more than time to bite the bullet.

"Running the risk of sounding horribly cliché… We need to talk." Cloud looked up from where he was straightening his side of the room they had shared ever since they were eleven.

"We talk all the time. Hell, I talk to you more than anyone else." Cloud said and went back to organizing the books on his shelf, dismissing Leon's request quickly in hopes of not having to deal with a subject that never failed to make him feel uncomfortable.

"Now is not the time for you to be playing dumb." Leon watched carefully as Cloud's hand paused inches from the spine of one of his books. "Contrary to popular belief, you have a brain and you are very intelligent, for a blonde that is. You know what I'm talking about."

Cloud sighed and turned to flop down on his bed. "Fine. Talk. I'm listening."

"Oh, no. It's not going be one of those talks where I say what I want to say and you sit there glaring at me until I'm finished and then only stick around long enough to tell me I'm wrong before running away." Leon crossed his arms over his chest and sent a disapproving look at the blonde. "This is going to be a _conversation_. I will speak and then you will speak and that cycle will continue on until we come to a sensible solution between the two of us that _both_ of us are okay following."

Cloud glared but nodded. Leon waited for him to sit up before continuing on. "I want to help pay Mom's medical bills."

"Well, that was straight to the point." Cloud muttered, knowing it had been futile to hope Leon would dance around the issue and not really touch on the more painful parts of it. Leon had always been direct to the point of being insulting, but it never hurt to hope. "I know you want to help, but it's my mom and my problem and I've been making more than enough recently to cover it."

"No, _we've_ been making more than enough for you to be able to cover it. It is _our_ business, _our_ munny, and _our_ mother." Cloud tried to cut in only to be silenced by Leon's potent glare. "We promised each other we were going to be in on everything together. Now, I didn't see anything wrong with splitting our profits or keeping what we make from our solo jobs because, quite frankly, I don't want to share _everything_ with you, but you cannot tell me what I can and can't do where my mother is concerned. And she is my mother, too, and you're just going to have to pull that stick from out of your ass and get over it."

"Are you done?" Cloud asked as a silence stretched out from the end of Leon's brief tirade. Leon nodded and gracefully lowered himself into a rolling chair, crossing his legs and staring at Cloud with a determined look in his grey eyes. "I don't want you having to give up anything or spending the munny you make on Mom because none of this was your fault, thus it is not your problem to fix. That and you've got more than enough on your plate with the orphanage. That is your thing, this is mine."

"I let you help with the orphanage." Leon pointed out stubbornly. "You wanted to help and I let you again and again and again. So what you're telling me is that it's okay for you to want to help me, but it's not okay when I want to help you? Well, I'm finding a huge problem with that view."

"Do I look like I care about any problem you may be having?" Cloud asked defensively, not wanting to admit that what Leon was saying had the ring of truth to it.

"Not at the moment, which is one hell of a change since you've never had a problem poking your nose into my business when it doesn't concern you before." Cloud had the grace to look at least slightly guilty at that. "Do you want to know why I ended up staying with you for nine years? I know I'm attractive, I've got guys and girls alike that have been chasing me for years. I could have a large selection should I choose to ever move on. Do you know why I've never moved on?"

"Because you love me?" Cloud asked quietly.

"Yes, that and because I don't want someone I've going to have to have to protect. Rinoa was nice and fun in her own way, but she needed a knight in shining armor. You've never needed protecting, nor have you ever wanted it, and that works just fine for me. I was asked out by Tifa, too, a few years back and I told her no, and that wasn't entirely because of the way I feel about you either. Tifa doesn't need protecting, true, but she's the kind of girl that wants to do the protecting. I don't need protection either."

Here Leon paused to allow his words to settle into the blonde's stunned mind. "You used to be my equal, way before college and the strain of trying to work and go to school. You were still my equal a few years ago when we were moving out of this house and trying to start out on our own, and you were still my equal last year, but something's changed since then. You started acting like a possessive jerk when it comes to Mom and what I can and can't do for her, and I don't like it. If I want someone looking out for me, I can always find someone with a little more personality and a little less repressed anger to do it for me."

"I didn't fall in love with someone who wanted to hold me within a spun glass bubble, and who wanted to dictate the way I should feel about something. I fell in love with someone that was right there beside me to let me make my mistakes, and to be there to laugh at me when they happened."

The room fell into a dead silence, neither man quite knowing what to say. It wasn't every day that either Cloud or Leon bothered spelling out their feelings, more than used to the other just somehow automatically knowing without having to resort to something as common as words. There wasn't going to be any glossing over unpleasant details this time. Leon was now demanding closure, and he was determined to get it.

"I…" Cloud stumbled over all the words he wanted to say, pausing to take a deep breath before hurtling onward before he developed second thoughts. "I just didn't want to be a burden… It was… It was all my fault. This whole damn mess was my fault and you can tell me it wasn't until the day we die, but I'm not going to believe you, and I've come to terms with that. Maybe I'm just not built to be able to forgive myself, or maybe I'm not built to be able to try hard enough to make the lesson stick."

There was something startlingly close to tears in the blonde's bright blue eyes and Leon rose slowly to his feet to make his way over to Cloud's side, wrapping an arm awkwardly around his shoulders, cursing himself for being crap at comforting people.

"Damn it all, Leon. I just want to _fix_ it." Cloud groaned in frustration and buried his head in his hands, not trusting his face not to give away everything he was feeling at the moment. "I want to fix it, but I can't. No one can, and that just makes it worse."

"I know." Leon murmured, barely loud enough for Cloud to hear as he began to absentmindedly rub circles on the other man's back. "But we can't fix everything; I've learned that the hard way. There's never going to be enough. Never enough munny, never enough research, never enough time. It's just the way the world is, and it's not going to consult with you every time it decides it wants to fuck you or someone you care about up the ass."

Cloud chuckled and fell back, dragging Leon down with him. "Leave it to you to pick the gayest metaphor _ever_."

Leon smiled and rolled so that he was half on top of his lover, resting his forehead on Cloud's. "So are you going to stop being an arrogant asshole?"

"Only if you promise never to speak of this _conversation_ again." Cloud smirked as Leon sighed but nodded his agreement. "As far as I'm concerned, my sudden change of mind is divine intervention and we did not spend twenty minutes talking about our _feelings_."

"We did what now?" Leon asked glibly and returned Cloud's sudden kiss wholeheartedly. It had been kind of hard to have sex when you had been trying to avoid your partner for weeks. Not to mention the fact that Leon was now pretty sure that there was a camera hidden under their bed back at the dorm, courtesy of Selphie.

Cloud groaned as Leon's hand slid up under his shirt. As much as he enjoyed watching all his friends and acquaintances running around trying to stop or encourage something that had already come to pass, he most certainly didn't enjoy the sudden lack of privacy that had come with it. Cloud _liked_ having sex with Leon regularly. In fact, right up until school had restarted, he'd been having more sex than was considered healthy with the other man, not that he cared much about what was healthy for him when Leon was the type to wander around the apartment in nothing other than his boxers.

No one in their right mind would, really.

And so when Cloud's shirt hit the floor, it didn't come with any surprise that Leon's was quick to follow, as the blonde ran his hands over the well-toned and defined chest that he enjoyed so much, groaning as Leon's hands began to do the same to him.

"We should be getting ready for the Thanksgiving dinner for the orphans." Leon murmured as their lips finally separated. Though if he really had meant what he said, he wouldn't have been unbuttoning Cloud's pants in the blonde's opinion, so Cloud didn't bother to worry about the other man stopping his pleasurable movements. "Mom's gonna be pissed if we're late."

"Then Mom's just going to have to be pissed." Cloud whispered back, not trusting his voice not to crack were he to speak with a more proper volume. He began helping Leon wiggle out of his pants and underwear while attempting to squirm out of his own at the same time.

Leon moaned in what Cloud thought to be an agreement, but it could have had more to do with the way Cloud was now rubbing their exposed erections together in a frantic need to feel friction than anything he'd said. The brunette quickly claimed his lover's lips in an intense and needy kiss, tongues sliding over one another as the boys inched around into a more comfortable position on the bed, with Cloud's head finally coming to rest just below his pillow before he dug his heels in and pushed up, effectively telling Leon that, while the wriggling and squirming around was enjoyable, he was more than ready to get to the better part of this encounter and would Leon please hurry things along damn it.

The brunette chuckled deeply in his throat and Cloud shivered from the sensation the sudden rumble in Leon's chest brought about. Leon was far too hot to be safe for anyone really, Cloud thought as the other man latched onto a pulse point in his neck and began nibbling and sucking, not thinking much beyond his sudden urge to claim what was his.

One of Cloud's hands went from where it was massaging deep patterns into the small of Leon's back to open a drawer in the small nightstand next to his bed in order to rummage around for the small tube of lubricant he knew was waiting for him in there. While being fucked with nothing more than spit and other questionable body substances against a tree (or any other hard surface really) was fun every once and a while, Cloud wanted to be able to walk properly for the foreseeable future.

"Leon." The other man's name had come out as more of a moan than a spoken word, but it had gotten his point across because Leon's head rose up and Cloud shoved the well-used tube under his nose, watching in aroused amusement as Leon's stormy eyes, dark grey with lust, lit up. "If you don't want to be late, then get on with it already."

Leon chuckled once more, he loved it when Cloud was forceful and at his mercy at the same time. It was something that happened so often he wouldn't have been surprised if he had started to take it for granted, but he never did. There was something so infinitely special about the way Cloud submitted to him, almost as though he were placing a whole hell of a lot more than just his trust in Leon's hands, and Leon never wanted to let him down, not in sex, not in anything.

He just didn't know how to say it in words most of the time.

Good thing words weren't something Cloud needed or wanted at the moment, seeing as his overly loud moans and tense writhing while Leon slowly rubbed lubricant covered fingers inside of him were telling the brunette more than he needed to know about whether or not Cloud was happy. Actually, with the way Cloud was now trusting down onto him, Leon was going to have to say that the blonde was so happy he was bordering on the thin edge of madness, which, considering he was the one pushing Cloud to that point, made him all the more excited, in more ways than one.

"Cloud…" Leon moaned as Cloud wrapped his muscular legs around the other man's trim waist and squeezed tightly, changing the angle of Leon's fingers to brush forcefully against the small bundle of nerves that had him seeing stars. If it hadn't been for thoughts of how happy Cloud would be (and how insanely pleased he would be as well) once Leon chose to move on to bigger and better things, he would probably have lost control right then and there, Cloud's overly loud scream more than enough to bring him close to the brink.

Damn but Cloud was sexy when he was spread out naked and gasping, not think about anything other than what he was feeling and what he wanted to done to him. It was… It was fucking _orgasmic_.

So when Leon slid slowly into his lover and felt the inner walls of Cloud's body tightening in glorious anticipation of what was to come, he was to be forgiven for momentarily forgetting the fact that the blonde hadn't been getting much in the past few months and thus probably wasn't ready for a quicker pace of movements quite that soon, but his mistake was covered for because Cloud was actually the type of person who didn't mind a bit of pain to get what he wanted. In fact, the sudden rush of pain from Leon's sudden movement actually served as a huge turn on and it was all the blonde could do to hold himself together.

"Fuck, Leon. _Harder_…" Leon moaned and dragged Cloud's face to his by the blonde's hair and forced his tongue past the other man's lips as he complied, nudging Cloud's hips higher with his free hands to give him a better angle with which to pound down deep into Cloud's most sensitive, personal spot, devouring his lover's moan with eager lips and teeth in a vague attempt to not alert the entire neighborhood as to what they were up to.

It wasn't going to take long for the end to come; they both had known that from the moment they had made the conscious decisions to go through with it. They knew it and still, somewhere deep down in a dusty, generally unused corner of their minds; they secretly wished it would last forever. That Leon would just keep thrusting and Cloud would continue to moan and clench the muscles in his ass in just the right way… That their kiss would never, ever end.

But all good things do eventually come to an end, that is just a hard, cold fact of life, and all it took was a few more thrusts, and one well-timed jerk and they were both sent careening over the edge into sticky, blissful madness, Leon collapsing on the heavily panting form of the slightly smaller male.

And before they both drifted off into a light doze, Cloud allowed a thought to quickly flit through his mind before any and all thinking was banned.

If all conversations ended this way, then maybe he wanted to have another one after all…

* * *

"They're late." The calm, but stern voice of the owner and caretaker of the orphanage pulled the weary Mrs. Strife from out of her daydreaming.

"They looked stressed out when they got home this morning. They probably laid down and lost track of time." Mrs. Strife sighed and rubbed a hand over the bridge of her nose, a gesture she had transferred to Leon over the years without meaning to. "What the hell am I saying? They are probably doing something very naughty while my green bean casserole gets cold in the oven."

Edea placed a calming hand on the woman's shoulder. "No, I'm sure they merely lost track of time unpacking."

Mrs. Strife waved off the other woman's concern. "I know my sons better than anyone. They need their time, too. I took Leon from here in hopes that I could give him something better than all this, not that this place isn't lovely… But I wanted to give him a normal life, a life that he should have had from the beginning, and all I ended up doing was putting more pressure on his and Cloud's shoulders than any reasonable little boy would have been able to handle."

Edea chuckled softly as she watched the other woman tuck a graying curl back into her bun before turning back to mixing the mashed potatoes. "Don't worry about it. Whether or not Leon had been adopted by you, he was going to be more responsible than he needed to be, and Cloud was much the same way. You did everything for Leon that he'd ever wanted. You gave him a home and a family that loved him. You gave him a purpose and an opportunity to have every chance available for him to succeed in life, and he took it without a second look back, and I know that he regrets nothing."

"Yes… I understand… And I don't know what I would have done without him and Cloud being there to pick up the slack. I know the twins would have had a much tougher life, and the fact that they managed to at least get that protected and comfortable life I was praying for the older two to have, is something that I am grateful for every second of every day. They saw to it that the twins never wanted for anything, even if it meant going without themselves, and they wanted to do it so much that they would rather have snuck around behind my back most times to make sure it got done than face my disappointment at knowing they were giving up some of the things that would have made _them_ happy." Mrs. Strife smiled softly. "But understanding doesn't make the guilt any less."

Edea was saved from having to comment on that by noticing two figures nimbly scrambling over the fence that separated the orphanage's backyard, from the neighborhood that had popped up behind them over time. "Sylvia, they're here."

Mrs. Strife looked up from her potato mashing (which was a good thing for the poor potatoes who had been properly mashed long before the distressed woman had taken to reliving her stress on them) to see Leon dropping gracefully to the ground on their side of the fence with Cloud's head of spiky, blonde hair popping up over the fence right afterward in order to hand over a set of packages to the brunette before leaping over himself.

"They look much calmer." Mrs. Strife commented in relief as she watched her two oldest make their way stealthily through the maze of toys and playground equipment to slip in through the back door. And by stealthily, it was understood to mean that they were attempting to run each other into said playground equipment and children's toys with every chance they got.

"Hey, Mom, sorry we're late." Cloud placed a hasty kiss on his mother's cheek as he rushed into the kitchen with Leon close on his heels, both men juggling armfuls of bags and pans. "Are the kids still playing out front?"

"They are, and they have been asking me when you were supposed to be getting here all morning." Edea answered as she swooped down to relieve the blonde of his burden while Mrs. Strife did the same for Leon. "They were starting to get worried that you weren't coming after all."

"Blame Leon for that." Cloud responded as he stretched, popping a few bones in his back as he did so, sighing happily at being relieved of the heavy bags and casseroles.

"Ha, as if it was _my_ fault?" Leon raised an eyebrow at his boyfriend as he bestowed a one-armed hug on each of the women present. "_I_ was the one who reminded you that we had to get going. _You_ were the one that couldn't wait. Hmmmm, I seem to be sensing a trend here…"

"And _you_ were the one that wanted to go all Dr. Phil about our issues. _I_ just wanted to unpack and clean my side of the room." Cloud pointed out as he made his way around the kitchen to the back door. "Come on, slowpoke. The kids are waiting."

Leon mumbled something under his breath that was not very nice about something very disgusting that Cloud could do with his cleaning that probably wouldn't have been legal anywhere in the world, but he waved to the watching women and jogged out after his exasperating boyfriend none the less. Edea chuckled and shook her head as she watched the two men scale the fence once more (Leon pausing to push Cloud forward, sending the blonde toppling ungracefully over the edge of the fence in retaliation for his comments in the kitchen), calling out greetings to the little old lady that lived in the house the backyard they were invading belonged to.

"And it's times like these that I wonder how they have managed to have an intimate relationship for nine years without beating each other into an early grave, and that's not even taking into account that they knew each other on a friend basis for eight years prior to the beginning of the more intimate phase." Mrs. Strife laughed, her mood lifted by the antics of her children.

Edea joined in her laughter as well, it was a subject that pretty much everyone questioned at least once if they had known the boys for more a than a year or so.

"Probably because they know that no one else on the face of the planet would be able to put up with their unbelievable amount of baggage and vices, and, for whatever insane reason, they love each other."

And Mrs. Strife could do nothing but nod and smile because it was the truth.

* * *

Axel was impatiently tapping his foot against the cherry wood paneling of the orphanage's front porch, a porch that Leon and Cloud had made by hand one summer when a lumber company had gone out of business and had donated some of their leftovers to the charity that paid for the upkeep on the house. His mind, however, was far from the charitable deeds the two had performed for the orphanage over time, but was locked firmly on that fact that the two men in question were missing, running late really, for another function they had wrangled their younger brothers into participating in. So now said younger brothers were left to wait, with Riku and Axel being forced to do so along with them.

Axel _hated_ waiting.

"I hate waiting!" It was to be noted that he was also the type of person to loudly proclaim his unwanted viewpoints on a variety of subjects without prompting in any given situation.

Roxas watched impassively as the group of thirty or so children ran around the front yard in hot pursuit of a young boy holding a bright, red ball, trying his hardest to ignore his boyfriend's complaints. "I don't care what you do and don't like. If you want to at least gain so much as _one_ point in my mother's favor, you're going to stay here and you're going to like it, or you can forget about ever gaining her approval."

Axel sighed loudly, but ceased his foot tapping. Normally, he wouldn't care about what someone thought of him, but Roxas' mother was different. There was something about her brand of disappointment that kind of hurt him in a way he was not used to or was comfortable with. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Roxas was the only one of his conquests that he had bothered to stick around with, or that Roxas' family was the kind of family that his family wasn't, a collected and loving gathering that never passed judgment on the ones lucky enough to be found inside the circle. A loner his whole life, Axel had suddenly come to realize that having a place to belong and a group of people ready to defend you at a moment's notice was a nice thing to have.

Not that he had told anyone (with the exception of Roxas who had somehow figured it all out on his own, Axel was sure there had been some form of black magic involved…) about his sudden personal revelation. It would have ruined his reputation, and that was something he wasn't going to be letting go of so soon. He liked being the crazy asshole. It was fun.

"This is the second time Leon has been late to something like this within about a month." Sora shook his head slowly. "This kind of behavior isn't like him at all."

"But it is very much like Cloud, and if Cloud's gotten his motorcycle out, I'm assuming Leon hasn't got much of a say in what time he gets here." Riku observed from where he was lying on his back under the bench swing the twins were stretched out on. He reached up a hand to push against the bottom of the bench, making it sway back and forth.

"Oh, I'm sure that is the case. The kids love it when they pull up on Cloud's bike." The boys looked over at where a thin blonde was curled in a chair with a book in her lap, her glasses sliding down her nose as she turned another page in what she was reading.

Axel laughed and slid his back down the column he was leaning against to plop down on the floor. "As if he wouldn't do it regardless of whether the kids liked it or not? He's crazier than I am when it comes to that bike. Riding around at ninety miles an hour with no helmet and Leon half hanging off the back… They're both bloody insane."

"_Quistis_…" Sora whined as he dropped his head over the handle of the swing so that he was now staring at the side of the house upside-down. "Make them get here _now_… It's getting cold and Mom made her famous mashed potatoes. I'm _hungry_…"

The blonde sighed and closed her book, pushing her glasses back to their regular position. "And you're also not two years old. Calm down and stop whining before I put you in time out."

"You don't have to be a bully about it." Sora pouted. "I was only saying what everyone else was thinking."

"I wasn't thinking that." Roxas muttered, internally keeping score for whatever make-believe game the children were playing with the ball. If he had to hazard a guess, he would say it was a cross between soccer and football, with very few rules and a lot of pushing.

"I wasn't either." Riku piped up from where he was now tracing patterns in the wood on the bottom of the bench with his right index finger to pass the time.

"I was!" Axel raised his hand cheerfully from his position on the floor and Quistis rolled her baby blue eyes.

"You have now unwittingly put yourself on that same level as the most immature man I have ever had the misfortune to meet, Sora. I hope you're pleased with yourself." She yawned and stretched her arms over her head, cracking an eye as she brought them back down again to make sure that the children weren't becoming too rambunctious or straying too close to the street.

Sora stuck his tongue out at the woman but kept his mouth shut for the time being. Quistis was well known as a stern disciplinarian, both with the orphans and with the people who showed up from time to time to take care of them. If she said she was going to put you in a time out, you were headed straight for the corner whether you were five or twenty-five. In fact, the only two people who had ever managed to get out of a Quistis punishment were Leon and Cloud, who didn't really give a rat's ass about what other people wanted and expected from them, and who weren't afraid to hit a girl if there was a justified cause.

"Roxy, Quistis is being mean to me." Axel whined, not being the brightest bulb where treading on other people's nerves were concerned.

"Don't care." Roxas answered in his smooth monotone, wishing he'd had the forethought to request for Axel to come later as opposed to bringing him along right from the beginning. He should have known that the red-head would be bored within a few minutes of arriving. "We've had this conversation several times in the past few hours, much less in the whole amount of time I've known you. You're an idiot. When you stop being one, you'll get more respect and maybe I'll take a minute to care about your problems from time to time."

"Bully…" Axel whined, but in a lower tone of voice, trying his hardest to project an image of a kicked puppy into his friends minds in hopes that they would go a bit easier on him. Too bad he didn't have supreme psychic abilities or it might have worked, well, on Sora at least. Sora liked puppies and severely disliked those who took pleasure in kicking them.

The front door to the house (it was really much bigger than a house, more of a haphazard sort of mansion from the outside at least with two wings sticking out from the main house where the children's dorms were housed) swung open and Edea and Mrs. Strife stepped out, both women looking relaxed and very pleased with themselves.

"Cloud and Leon are going to be here in a few minutes." Edea said calmly as she took up a place leaning against the porch's wraparound railing. "They just hopped Mrs. Wilson's fence about two minutes ago to drop off the casseroles that Sylvia had left in the over."

"Ha! They did bring the bike!" Riku punched a hand in the air in victory, conveniently forgetting where he was, and smashing it against the bench, sending it swinging madly with the twins yelping in surprise at the sudden motion. "Owie… I didn't think winning was going to hurt so much. Ow…"

"That's what you get for resting under a bench like an idiot." Quistis stated as she got up from the chair, offering it to the paler than usual Mrs. Strife. The older woman accepted the offer graciously and sat down with a soft sigh.

Riku stuck his tongue out at the woman, watching in amusement as she rolled her eyes and shook her head, inwardly wondering why so many of the grown adults she knew resorted to kindergarten tactics when they were trying to show disdain for what someone else was saying. She filed her concern away for another day and turned to Edea with a gentle smile on her face. "Who else is coming besides the boys?"

"I think Cloud mentioned a few of his friends were going to drop by for a bit later. Yuffie, Tifa, and Yuna for sure. Leon said that Rikku and Paine didn't know whether they were going to have time or not and Kairi and Naminé said much the same when I got Selphie to give them a call. As for the train queen herself, she's coming by tomorrow with a another turkey she got her interest group to donate, which reminds me, we're going to need more tax write-offs forms by the end of the year if the Christmas season doesn't wipe us out completely." Quistis took a deep breath and wrinkled her nose in thought. Why did it seem like she was forgetting something important?

"That shouldn't be too hard to manage." Edea said thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact, I think I can get Cloud to run downtown and get me some forms next week when he comes over to fix our accounting program. It broke last month, remember?"

Quistis snorted. "How could I forget? I've been keeping the books by hand for the past two weeks. It's about damn time that lazy blonde got off his butt long enough to help me. Too bad Leon sucks at coding, or I would have gotten him to do it forever ago."

Mrs. Strife laughed. "Well, at least Leon's got numbers going for him. I'll bet if you ask him nicely enough, he'll redo the electronic books from the time your system went down once Cloud gets it back online."

"I'll bet if I ask him nicely enough, he'll do just about anything that doesn't involve him talking to other grown people." Quistis added sarcastically, basking in the laughter she had managed to draw out of the four young men listening in on the women's conversation. "If it's over the age of fifteen, he suddenly doesn't know what to say to it."

"Unless it's Cloud!" Axel and Riku shouted at the same time, each one trying to be a little louder than the other so the comment would be attributed to them.

The women looked on in curiosity when the twins sent their respective boys very potent glares (something that was an impressively managed feat where Sora was concerned considering Riku was located directly underneath him separated by the very solid form of the swing). Before they could ask what was going on, however, the sound of a powerful engine revving in the distance pulled their eyes (and attentions) to the street where the children had dropped the highly coveted ball and were now cheering and jumping around while never once looking away from the unmistakable form of Fenrir, with Cloud's unforgettable blonde spikes standing out against its black chrome, growling at the end of the street.

Mrs. Strife's knuckles turned white from her suddenly strong grip on the arm of the chair as Cloud revved the powerful engine once more. "He's going to kill himself on that thing someday. Hell, that damn bike isn't even street legal!"

"Calm down, Sylvia." Edea murmured as the boys and Quistis rushed past her to join the children bouncing around on the sidewalk. "Cloud knows what he's doing, and the kids love it. Yell at him about it tomorrow if you have to, but let the kids have their fun today."

Mrs. Strife nodded and watched with forced calm as Cloud released his brakes and shot down the street faster than would ever have been allowed on a normal day. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood when the bike popped back onto its back wheel with Leon (who had been crouched down behind Cloud from the beginning) using Cloud's shoulders to push himself up into a standing position. Mrs. Strife held her breath until the boys had zipped past the orphanage and settled back down onto two wheels, letting the air came out in a rush of relief as Cloud and Leon leant into the quick one-hundred and eighty degree turn and rode back at a much more legal pace, coming to a gentle stop right in front of the squealing crowd of admirers.

"You really do hate it when they do that." Edea said, more as a statement than a question and Mrs. Strife nodded, seemingly crumpling in on herself as the adrenaline left her system.

"I just keep having images of them tilting back and breaking open their skulls flashing at the back of my mind every time they do this. Hell, every time Cloud rolls Fenrir out of the garage. I know Cloud promised that he would never take Fenrir out on the streets unless it was an emergency or it was for the kids, and to the best of my knowledge he's kept that promise, but I know what he does on his other bike, too." Mrs. Strife rubbed hard circles on her forehead in an effort to ward off the headache she could feel building behind her eyes. "They don't wear helmets, they speed, and they think they're invincible, but I can't say anything about it because they aren't going to listen. At least Leon's got a car he'd prefer to use over hanging off that tiny seat of Cloud's normal bike…"

Edea leant forward to rest her elbows on the railing as Leon swung his leg over the back of Fenrir to rest with his back against one of the huge tailpipes that had set Cloud back on rent munny for two months in order for him to purchase them before they disappeared off the market. The blonde grinned and pressed a button under the handlebars and the front end of the monstrosity popped open in both directions and the little shelves he'd put it slid out to reveal rows of small, wrapped boxes. The children screamed and clapped, pushing each other out of the way as they jockeyed for better positions against the waist-high fence that went around the front yard.

"Look at him, though." Edea gestured to the practically glowing expression on both boys' faces, and they began calling out names of orphans one at a time in order to hand out their presents. "They love doing this, and I'll bet you twenty munny that they went without a few meals to be able to afford all those gifts for the children. And they'll do it again come Christmas time, and each and every birthday, and Valentine's Day, Easter, the Fourth of July… Any time when normal children would be spending time with their families and receiving more attention. And if that means turning a blind eye to some of the more unorthodox things that give them their fair share of pleasure, then I find that it is a small price to pay for the joy they bring to a place that is all too often without such a simple commodity."

Mrs. Strife nodded. "You worry about them, too."

Edea smiled, pleased that the other woman had been able to pick up on that from her mini speech. The caretaker loved the mischievous boys that had devoted more time and munny to an institution that rarely got the attention it deserved and so desperately needed than even the richest philantropist. They had built the front porch, financed and helped construct the second wing for the girls, built the metal swing set in the backyard by hand, organized and set precedence for holiday parties and celebrations, created programs to get the orphanage's finances together and make them easily accessible, and many, many day to day things that the often under-staffed, over-crowded orphanage desperately needed to take care of. They had spent so much time going the extra mile, that it was almost like they were a permanent part of the family they were trying to create for the poor children who didn't know what a family truly was.

And so it was with a serene smile and a clear, confident tone of voice that Edea answered the patiently waiting Mrs. Strife.

"What mother wouldn't?"

* * *

"See! I told you Cloud was the coolest!" The children had gathered together in the living room while they waited for the adults to set up the picnic tables and all the food out in the backyard. In the center of the gathering were the two newest additions to the gang of children, a little boy and girl who were marveling at the complexity of the wooden tops they had been given by Cloud about five minutes earlier.

"Nuh uh!" Another young voiced piped up from somewhere deep inside the dog pile of children wriggling around on the couch. A head of coppery curls popped up from out of the stack of bodies and a gap-toothed grin spread across the little six year old's freckled face. She was clutching a brand new teddy bear in one tiny hand. "Leon's the best!"

"Cloud is!" A boy of about nine years stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. "He's like twenty bajillion times cooler than Leon! Leon's mean and grumpy."

"Is not!" Another boy joined into the argument from where he was attempting to rip through the plastic surrounding the puzzle Leon had specifically picked out for him. "Leon's just too cool to be all soft and _girly_ like Cloud, so neener!"

"Cloud is _not_ girly!" A pair of twins yelled out at the same time, their long dark pigtails bouncing as they violently shook their heads before continuing on, still speaking at the same time. "He's _dreamy_…"

"Is not!"

"Is, too!"

"Cloud's all girl lookin' and boring. Leon's the fun one!"

"Is not! He's boring and reads all the time!"

"Well, Cloud's always typing away on his computer. Leon always finds time to play with us!"

"Cloud plays with us more than Leon does, for sure!"

"Nuh uh!"

"Uh huh!"

"Nuh…"

"STOP!" The little girl in the middle yelled at the top of her lungs, blushing furiously as all eyes were turned in her direction and the orphans waited patiently for her to say whatever she had to say so they could get back to their disagreement. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, speaking so softly that all present had to lean in to hear her.

"I think they're _both_ the coolest."

The children were quiet for a minute after that, each one thinking about the two men who had come to mean more to them than any other adult would ever be able to. Slowly, one by one, they nodded, silently agreeing that there were things about both men that made them equally cool.

"Who are they?" The girl's brother asked, pushing his fingers tentatively against the polished wood of his top. He hadn't come from a good home, none of them really had, and all the men he'd ever known had been mean, and uncultured, more prone to yelling and hitting than handing out presents and talking to children. It was a story that was so common in the orphanage that it was pretty much an automatic assumption that you had come from an abusive home unless proved otherwise.

The copper-headed girl spoke up again, disentangling herself from the pile of kids as she went. "No one really knows, but their names are on a sign over the girl's dorms so they must be pretty important, and they always take time to stop and play with us, no matter how busy they are. And they bring us gifts and candy and watch over us when Matron and Auntie Quisty go out shopping! And sometimes Cloud lets us sit on his motorcycle when we've been extra, extra good!"

"But don't tell Matron!" The boy with the puzzle giggled. "She's not supposed to know about that! Cloud's momma would get mad at him."

"Ooooh!" The twins squealed, and giggled to each other behind their hands. "Leon would be mad, too! He told Cloud that he was never, never, never allowed to let us get on _ever_!"

The group of young men hiding in the doorway grinned at that. Blackmail was always a good thing to accumulate, and listening to the children unnoticed was always worth it, for that purpose and for another completely different reason. It never ceased to amaze those that knew Cloud and Leon on a day to day basis exactly how much the kids loved and respected the two men. They just didn't seem like the type of people who would care so much about the well-being of total strangers, and young strangers that didn't know the meaning of personal space at that.

The children had now moved on to chattering excitedly about the meal that was about to be provided for them. They went to school, they knew what Thanksgiving was all about, and they knew that, while what they had wasn't exactly considered a normal family, it was something they loved and had come to accept over time. And it was times like these, when all the adults that came fluttering in and out of their lives gathered together and turned their undivided attention on the young ones that made the children happier than they could ever remember being.

"Isabelle…" All the children looked up at as Leon made his way into the room, blatantly ignoring his younger, adopted brothers and their seemingly permanent attachments. The copper-headed girl with the missing teeth grinned up at him and hugged her new teddy bear closer to her body.

"Yes, Leon?" She asked with her best smile, trying out her new found manners on the brunette, inwardly glowing when he smiled warmly at her efforts.

"Would you mind coming with me for a second?" He asked pleasantly. She nodded enthusiastically and bounced over to his side, grabbing his hand and sticking her tongue out at the remaining children, chattering happily up at him as she followed him out of the room and down the hallway to a generally unused room about halfway down. The other children watched her go enviously, and the boys who were still eavesdropping from the hallway exchanged curious glances. Leon didn't believe in playing favorites with the kids. He thought it was cruel, so why would he be doing it now?

They were about to get up and find out for themselves when Quistis came up from behind them with a surprising amount of stealth.

"Would you four mind rounding up the kids and bringing them to the backyard? Yuffie and Tifa got here five minutes ago and should be waiting with the majority of the food. The rest of us should join you by the time you get them settled in their seats." Sora nodded and accepted for the group and they watched her walk off down the hallway, disappearing into the same room Leon had taken the little girl Isabelle.

"What do you think that's all about?" Riku asked Axel as they followed the twins into the room, allowing Sora and Roxas to deal with corralling the children and leading them outside. The red-head shrugged.

"I have no earthly idea." Axel deftly moved out of the way as a line of children streamed past him with Sora hot on their heels. Apparently they didn't want to leave the living room as of yet and were showing it by not only disregarding what the twins were asking them to do, but by chasing them down in order to torture them so they never made the mistake of attempting to ask them to do something ever again. "I gave up on trying to have things make sense a long time ago, remember?"

"More like you realized you made just about as much sense as what you were trying to understand and chose to keep your shroud of 'mystery' or whatever instead of satisfying your curiosity." Riku shrugged and watched in amusement as a wave of children ranging from age four to twelve knocked Roxas onto his rear end and proceeded to crawl all over him. "I hate to point this out to you, but you're a horrible liar. You can never resist sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong."

"This is very true… And through my sheer will to discover that which perplexes me, I have come up with a rather brilliant, if I do say so myself, plan to catch Leon and Cloud in the act, proving once and for all that we are right, leaving Roxas to be my slave for a year and Sora to become yours for the picking." Axel smirked victoriously, ignoring his boyfriend's frantic cries for help from deep inside the pile of children that had swarmed him. Apparently the children didn't care about those who weren't trying to make them do things. Or maybe they were like mini T-rexes. If you didn't move around much, they didn't see you.

"Do tell, Sir Axel." Riku responded with overly dramatized interest. "What is this genius plan of yours that is going to result in our winning the bet and placing Roxas and Sora right where we want them, for a year at least?"

"All will be revealed to you in time, good sir." Axel swung his arm dramatically, nearly braining the still running Sora in the head. He froze, however when he noticed there were now three children who had paused in their chase of the brunette ball of energy and were staring at him as though he were the last chocolate chip cookie.

"Don't move, Axel." Riku stage whispered. "They can smell _fear_."

There came a loud sigh from the doorway. Both boys swiveled to find Mrs. Strife standing in the doorway. "They do no such thing, and I do not appreciate the two of you throwing my boys to the wolves and then proceeding to ignore their cries for help."

Riku had the decency to cringe in guilt while Axel attempted to stop his sudden debilitating eye twitch at having been caught not treating Roxas very kindly by the one woman he was trying to convince to like him.

"Becky, Chance, Jacob, Sasha, Trey, Kristen and Kara!" The children chasing Sora stopped dead in their tracks and turned to cower before the imposing figure of Mrs. Strife. "I know you are not chasing my son half way across existence instead of listening to him."

"No ma'am." The children chorused guiltily and Sora shot his mother a look of thanks before collapsing on the sofa.

"I would highly suggest you get your friends to stop mauling my other son and join us outside for dinner before the food gets cold." The children nodded and quickly went about complying, filing out of the room in a gloomy line within minutes.

"Thanks, Mom." Roxas muttered from where he was lying on his back staring up at the ceiling in shock. It wasn't every day you nearly died from being mauled by children who were, at most, eight years younger than yourself. He let his head fall to the side and shot a glare at his boyfriend. His boyfriend who wasn't going to be getting any for quite some time due to his sudden lapse in judgment where rescuing the person who he supposedly cared about was concerned.

"Hey, kids scare the living bajesus out of me, Roxas, and you know it." Axel threw up his hands in defense, not thinking that Roxas was going to go so far as to attempt to do him bodily harm, but wanting to be ready just in case. "I was _thinking_ about saving you if that makes any difference."

"It makes absolutely no difference. I don't know why you even bothered trying that line." Roxas sighed and gestured for Axel to help him to his feet. The firebug complied, hoping that by doing so he was making a positive move for digging himself out of his newest hole.

"Need help, Sora?" Riku asked, extended his hand to his friend, trying and failing to ignore the burning gaze of his crush's mother boring into his back right between his shoulder blades.

The brunette spared his soon to be ex-friend a glare worthy of Leon's approval and ignored the proffered hand in favor of lurching to his feet on his own. "I needed help when there were ten devil children on my tail with the sole purpose of sitting on me."

"I highly doubt any of these kids qualify for the title of spawn of Satan, Sora." Mrs. Strife stated from her place in the doorway. "Now it would be immensely helpful if you would join Yuna in the kitchen to help with organizing the deserts. Hopefully Edea, Quistis, Cloud, and Leon will be finished with what they have to do by the time you're done."

"What _are_ they doing?" Sora asked curiously, ignoring the way Riku was now hovering over him in an attempt to make up for throwing Sora to the wolves.

"You know I'm not allowed to tell you that." Mrs. Strife sent a stern look of all four boys, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that if they were given the opportunity to slink away, they would head directly to press their ears against a closed door that was concealing a conversation they did not need to be privy to.

The boys sighed but went to do what she had told them to regardless, knowing better than to try and pry it out of her. And Mrs. Strife watched them go, wondering (and not for the first time) when exactly they were going to grow up.

* * *

Luckily for the sanity of the children and those who had been tasked to watch after them, the secret business had been taken care of long before the kids got the idea into their heads that they should be eating immediately as opposed to waiting patiently. Those gathered around the long line of tables turned to watch as Edea, Quistis, Cloud, Leon, Isabelle and a pair of adults they had never seen before made their way to their designated places (with Edea, Cloud and Leon at the head of the table and Quistis at the foot with the strangers.)

Edea turned to where Isabelle was climbing into an empty chair next to the female twins. "Izzie… Would you like to share your good news with the rest of your friends before Cloud and Leon say the blessings?"

Isabelle beamed at the gathering, showing off her missing teeth. "I gots a new mommy!"

The female stranger at the end of the table smiled softly and the children broke out into applause and whoops of joy at their friend's good fortune. In fact, Rikku (who had managed to show up after all) and Yuffie were so busy hugging the laughing little girl that it took them a full five minutes to realize everyone else had calmed down were waiting for them to stop so they could continue on with what they needed to do before they could get on with the eating.

"Thank you, girls. It's nice to see that your endless enthusiasm is still intact." Edea grinned as the girls blushed and went back to their seats, folding their hands delicately in their laps, suddenly the picture of perfectly mannered, innocent young women. "Now, Leon, if you would…?"

Leon nodded and rose to his feet. "I know that Cloud's supposed to help me with this, but since he's pretty much filled his public speaking quotient for the year due to Zack untimely desire to finally propose to Aerith, I decided to give him a break this time around." Here he paused to allow the adults present to laugh and for Cloud to get a good angry glare in before continuing on. "So Thanksgiving is for giving thanks for things that we have been given throughout the course of the year. Having been an orphan myself for the first ten or so years of my life, I can safely say there wasn't really much for me to be thankful for at first."

He now had everyone's undivided attention from the youngest two year old to the oldest adult as he took a deep breath and plowed on ahead. "But I was wrong. There is a lot these children have to be thankful for this year, and Isabelle just gave us a shining example of one of the most important. Thanksgiving is a time for families, be them new, old, or just plain strange. Thanksgiving is when we look around at the people who are gathered around us and know that we are loved and cherished."

"Whether your family is a traditional one, with a mother and a father and a white picket fence in the suburbs, or a one parent home with four to five kids where just getting by is a major accomplishment, or even an orphanage full of children who are in the same boat as you, with adults coming and going as though they were stuck in an revolving door, it is still family and the members still love each other. They might not ever get along, and there are going to be times when it seems as though there is more disagreeing than agreeing, but that person is going to be there for you to catch you when you fall whether you want them there or not, and that is what we have to be thankful for."

"So after we finish eating here and we've exchanged a 'thank you' or two with the ones responsible for providing this meal and after we've been tucked into bed and are waiting to fall asleep, take a second to remember that you are not alone and that there is someone out there that loves you, and would do anything to make sure that you are safe and sound."

There was a long silence in which some of the adults had to duck down to quickly swipe traitorous tears from out of the corner of their eyes following the conclusion to Leon's speech. It was one of the children that started clapping first but the others caught on so quickly that the single clap turned into a loud roar within seconds.

Once everyone had calmed down, the adults rose to their feet, spreading out around the table to help the children who needed it make their plates. Nothing was said about what had just taken place, but it was the only thing on every mind for the remainder of the meal.

* * *

"You never told me you were good at giving speeches." Cloud muttered as he rolled over on his bed to rest on his back. Leon shrugged from his position at his desk across the room.

"You never asked." The brunette clicked a few keys on his computer and turned to spare a look in Cloud's general direction. "Not everyone has a crushing fear of public speaking like you."

"Did you really mean to say all that, or did it just come out?" Cloud snickered. "You know, like word vomit?"

"How old are you?" Leon asked and rolled his eyes when Cloud sat up with a goofy grin on his face and held up his hand with five fingers extended towards Leon. "Forget I asked… But no, I didn't mean to say all of it. The beginning was planned, and the end, but the middle just kind of came to me spur of the moment."

Cloud considered this newest bit of information for a second before exhaling loudly and plopping back down onto the bed. "I hate not knowing what to say and coming out sounding like an idiot because of it."

"Are you trying to say that I ended up sounding like an idiot?" Leon asked absentmindedly as he went back to his computer game. He knew that wasn't what Cloud was trying to say. It was just how Cloud was. The blonde was not very good at thinking about the way things sounded before he said them, which was actually his point.

Cloud sighed in frustration. "You knew what I meant. Stop being an asshole about everything."

"I'm not trying to be an asshole." Leon began shutting down his computer, suddenly far too tired to concentrate on playing a game or doing much else but sleep. "Okay, so I am, but you set yourself up for it by not stopping to think about what you say before you say it. Sometimes it works out for you, as in the case of Zack's wedding, but other times it just gets you in trouble, as in the case of every time you and Reno end up in the same room… Mainly because Reno's got the same problem as you do. He's just louder about it."

"So fix it, Mr. Grumpypants." Cloud ordered childishly as Leon crawled into the bed and wrapped his arms around him. "And go sleep in your own bed. Sora and Roxas could come in and then we'd be busted and you'd blame me for it because I didn't make you move."

"I'm not going to fix your problems. If you want to fix them yourself then that's a choice you're going to have to make, but I would like to say that I love you _because_ you have flaws, not in spite of them." Leon said, tightening his grip on Cloud should the blonde decide he wanted to forcefully remove him from the bed. "As for the twins, they haven't set foot in our room since we were twelve and you threw a letter opener at them, sharp end first. I'm not too worried about them poking their heads in where they don't belong as far as this room in concerned."

"And if they do…?"

"Fuck it. I miss being able to hold you during the night and if you ever so much as think about telling someone that, I will pull your vocal chords out through your mouth and stuff them so far up your ass that it's going to take a crew of miners to get them out."

"Jeeze, how could I have ever questioned your love and devotion?" Cloud sighed but relaxed into Leon's embrace none the less. "I hate feeling weird, and talking to large crowds of people makes me feel weird."

"So don't do it, Cloud." Leon mumbled into the blonde's spiky hairdo. "No one can make you do something that makes you feel uncomfortable if you're dead set against feeling that way. Just because I can speak in front of crowds without having a mini-panic attack doesn't mean I like doing it. Public speaking is more Sora and Axel's thing than anyone else. I'd much rather leave it to them if I thought they wouldn't say something utterly brain-dead."

Cloud laughed at that. "Yeah, I guess you're right… For once…"

"I'm always right."

"Sure you are. Go to bed, Leonhart."

Leon bit back his sarcastic remark in favor of closing his eyes. He really was too tired to deal with another argument (fake or otherwise) at the moment. He quickly began to drift away into the fuzzy place he went when he was right on the line between dozing and deep sleep, when he heard Cloud say something else, the other man's voice barely above a whisper in a way that had Leon wondering if he'd really heard anything in the first place or if he'd just imagined the whole thing when he remembered the incident in the morning.

"Oh… And I'm going to be here to catch you, too… Whether you want me to or not…"

* * *

_**A/N: **Woot! Is done! I is happy! I... Have suddenly realized I have to finish the next chapter in the next eight days if I want to keep on a good steady updating track... Crap monkies..._


	6. Day Ninety: No More Speeches, I Swear It

_**A/N: **This is late for one of two reasons._

_Reason One: It is horrendously long and immensely hard to type since I spiraled into writer's block about halfway through but didn't want to shirk on length because that would be wrong to you... Expecially Aindel S. Druida and twilightpath for being amazing and reviewing to every chapter faithfully. I really do love the both of you._

_Reason Two: A very, very selfish reason actually... I like reviews. They make me want to sit for hours stairng at a blank screen and writing and rewriting to perfection because there are people out their who are getting joy (or anything really) from what I am doing, and I like to know what people think... I really, really do and I know I sound a bit selfish because of it, but if the interests of the readers are fading, then I am not doing my job properly and my interest in turn wanes... I don't want this to happen. I love this story... I dream about this story... I have elongated tis story beyond what it was in its infancy because of this love and, forgive me if this comes off a tad on the rude, demanding side, but I love to know that there are people out there who feel just as devoted to this as I am..._

_So... I ignore the whining, stressed Scout and enjoy your previously scheduled programing..._

_**

* * *

**_

_**Chapter Five**_

_**Day Ninety: Have I Ever Mentioned That I Hate Family Gatherings?**_

"Sora called like five minutes ago and told me they hadn't come downstairs yet. He thinks they're probably still sleeping." Riku propped his feet up on Tifa's living room coffee table and sank down deeper into the sofa cushions. "Apparently they were up late helping their mom set up for their big family thing today."

Tifa shrugged her shoulders and took a sip of her tea. "Lovely. So that means we're not missing anything right now. So who all is going over to their house today? I wish I could but I've got some deal with my boyfriend's family I can't get out of."

"Riku and I are going to be there for the most part." Axel raised his hand.

"But we're skipping out after dessert because Sora wants to go do something with Sephiroth and our dad." Riku rolled his shoulders. "I don't see why. It'll only be boring and uncomfortable for all of us and I've got twenty munny riding on Dad getting drunk and trying to run some kind of crazy experiment on Axel again."

Yuna chimed in from where she was flipping through a magazine on the floor. "I'm going to be there the whole time to keep Tidus company. Rikku and Paine are running interference with my family."

Tifa nodded. "Good. Sephiroth isn't going to make a surprise appearance, is he?"

Riku shook his head. "Not to my knowledge. Since Zack and Aerith are going to be with the Strife's, Reno has no one to keep him company at his family deal. Sephiroth promised to stay until Rude and Tseng can get off work and take over. By that time, he shouldn't have time to do anything other than go home and hide the booze before Roxas, Sora, Axel and I get there."

"We'll make sure he doesn't try and skip out early!" Kairi chimed in from her place curled up on a loveseat with her twin.

"Yeah, Reno's easy enough to distract so there'll be plenty of times Sephiroth might have an opening to run away." Naminé giggled into the palm of her hand. "Kairi and I will be sure to redirect Reno's attention should that turn out to be the case."

Tifa nodded once more. "That sounds like a plan to me." She turned to look over at where Axel and Riku were now caught up in a thumb war to pass the time. "Riku told me you have a plan, Axel? Care to share?"

The red-head looked up, the red tattoos under his eyes seemingly flashing with the same evil glint reflected in his emerald eyes. He winced slightly as Riku pinned his thumb, jerking his hand out of the other boy's grasp. "Oh, hell yes I've got a plan, and it's practically foolproof."

"Considering you are quite the fool, I would hope so." Yuna responded and flipped another page in her magazine.

"Not nice, Yuna, not nice." Axel pouted and continued on, some of his enthusiasm fading from the criticism. "_Anyways_… I was thinking… The whole reason Sora found out that Riku was constantly undressing him with his eyes was because… He caught Riku in the act… Now, that tactic didn't exactly work out where my silver-haired friend was concerned…"

"You mean it hasn't worked _yet_, Axel." Riku interrupted, still fully in his recuperation stage from having his latest advances shot down. "It's going to work soon, I swear it will."

"You just keep right on deluding yourself then." Axel waved off the interruption and went on. "Like I was saying, it didn't work for Riku because Sora's on the complete opposite end of the spectrum than his brothers. Actually I sometimes wonder if he isn't the adopted one instead of Leon. Leon fits, he's practically two seconds away from becoming homicidal like Cloud and Roxas. Sora's too happy. He won't even kill a cockroach…"

"Axel!" The red-head glanced over at where Tifa was glaring at his with her arms crossed over her substantial chest. "Get on with what you have to tell us or shut up."

"Jeeze. You don't have to get snippy about it." Axel was about to complain when he realized he was now being glared at by everyone in the room. He bit back a gulp and finished up his explanation as quickly as he could. "Right, so, Leon and Cloud have been sending heated looks at each other since forever, but the other never looks over in time to catch them or the situation wasn't a good one with which to judge if the other was making bedroom eyes at him or someone behind him, you know? So, like, all we have to do is thrust them into positions where one or the other will… uh… Oh fuck being tasteful. Put them in a situation where one or the other gets aroused and make sure that they can't escape in time for the other not to notice the sudden trip to the gutter."

"You used the word 'other' like fifty times." Riku muttered, still slightly depressed at the fact that his best friend seemed to think that he was not going to prevail on his own private love front.

"No one asked you, Riku." Naminé jumped into the conversation. "I think Axel's had a really good idea here. Cloud and Leon are both very attractive men and I'm sure that there's more to the way they look at each other than just a 'wow, you look good today' kind of deal."

"We're adults here." Kairi cut in. "Basically, what my twin is trying to say, is that there are times when Leon looks at Cloud as though he's two seconds away from dropping him down on the ground and fucking him right then and there. And I've seen Cloud go glassy eyed when Leon's around, normally when he's shirtless, where I thought he was about to strip down to nothing and present himself to Leon with a gift-wrapped bow."

"Too bad they're both incredibly blind to what's going on around them or they would have gotten together years and years and years ago." Yuna tossed her magazine a few feet away and got to her feet. "As it is, I've got to go pick up Tidus. His old clunker's in the shop again and he still refuses to scrap it and get something from this century, so I'm stuck on driving duty this week. Riku, Axel, I'll see you two later. As for the rest of you, peace out until tomorrow."

"Goodbye, Yuna." The female twins sang out at the same time, giggling to themselves as the rest exchanged their goodbyes with the sweet brunette. Riku and Axel standing to excuse themselves as well since they were supposed to be making an appearance at the Strife's within the next few hours.

And so their plan had begun. It wasn't exactly the best, or most well-thought out plan in the history of plan making, but it was the best they had at the moment, and there was a high probability of it working. Even if it didn't work, it would prove to be highly amusing at the very least, and when there was something amusing to be done, no one bothered hesitating.

* * *

Halfway across town, completely oblivious to their friend's plots, Cloud and Leon were curled up on Cloud's bed with the blonde using Leon's chest as a pillow and the brunette with his arms wrapped possessively around his shoulders. The sun, however, was getting fairly annoying considering Leon was the one unlucky enough to be facing the window, so he shifted a bit to bury his head deeper into Cloud's hair.

Leon's movements, while actually quite subtle, were enough to alert Cloud to the fact that it was morning and he was supposed to have been awake long before that point. He attempted to roll over, quickly realizing that he wasn't going to be able to since Leon had taken the movement as a sign that Cloud no longer wished to be restrained and had tightened his grip on the blonde to prevent him from wriggling away. Cloud sighed deeply and proceeded to snuggle deeper into Leon's side, having learned the hard way over the course of his relationship that going along with what Leon wanted in the morning generally ended up well… Especially since it generally ended up with sex and Cloud loved sex. A lot.

And it looked like Cloud was going to be getting what he wanted, too, because the next thing he knew, Leon's lips were pressing gently against his and Cloud found his hand making its way to tangle in the hair at the nape of Leon's necks of its own free will, not that Cloud was complaining about it. In fact, he was perfectly okay with anything that increased the pressure of Leon's lips on his own.

They lay like that for a while, allowing their lips to slide over one another, content with gently trailing their hands over each other's bodies and laying peacefully for the time being.

The moment was ruined, however, when Leon heard the shifting of clothing from somewhere over Cloud's shoulder, almost as though there was someone perched on the desk who had uncrossed and then re-crossed their legs. He detached his lips and glanced over the blonde's shoulder, stiffening and freezing when he saw that there _was_ someone sitting on the desk watching them calmly, the blood leaving his face as he recognized exactly who it was that was watching them.

"Leon? What's wr-…? Oh…" Now it was Cloud's turn to look mildly freaked out as he twisted to see what Leon had been looking at, only to find his mother staring it them with a look of slight amusement on her face. "Hello, Mother. What brings you into our room on this fine Thanksgiving morning?"

"I know, boys. I know."

"And what exactly is it that you know? That you're seriously invading our privacy?" Cloud responded sarcastically as he moved the leg he had carelessly thrown over Leon's hip in order to sit up. He was normally much nicer to his mother but, under the current circumstances, he figured she wouldn't mind his rudeness too much.

Mrs. Strife shot her son a look that clearly stated there would never be an occasion where not utilizing manners was acceptable and Cloud refrained from commenting further, though he was sorely tempted to dive under the covers and disappear until his mother had given up and left them alone. Leon was also toying with this thought, figuring that hiding would come eventually anyways. It was only a matter of time once they found out what had possessed their mother to barge into their room on a morning she knew they would want to be alone.

"Don't play dumb with me, boys… I _know_."

And with the sudden emphasis on the word 'know' the boys minds simultaneously flashed back through everything they had done throughout the course of the year that would make their mother disappointed to the point of becoming confrontational. Nothing leaped out at them until they arrived, pretty much at the same time, on the biggest incident to take over their lives to date… The fucking bet.

"You do _not_…!" Leon started more than concerned for his personal well-being now that he knew exactly what it was that had set his mother on the warpath, but he didn't get to finish as he quivered in the wake of his mother's angry glare. Sylvia Leonhart Strife was not one to be trifled with when the emotions and preconceptions of her younger children were in danger of being messed with.

Cloud took this moment to attempt to launch himself off the bed in hopes of being able to make a break for the door and temporary freedom, only to find himself frozen in the midst of his mother's glare of death and destruction as well.

"Cloud Edward Strife-Leonhart, you get your _ass_ back on that bed right this second." And now she was using a combination of cursing and his middle name. Cloud resolutely fought back tears of fear as he lifted himself up off the floor and back onto the bed. He didn't think he wanted to die as of yet.

Leon gave in to his urge to dive under the covers at long last; only to pop back out as Mrs. Strife called him out on it. "Squall Strife-Leonhart, (and with the use of his real name he realized that the blankets were not going to swallow him after all and that he was better off facing the music in hopes that pacifying his mother now would lead to less incapacitation later) you had best not be thinking of doing something stupid like running away, are you?"

"No ma'am." Leon muttered solemnly as he settled into his side of the bed, now quite happy with the fact that he had chosen the side closer to the wall the night before since it now meant Cloud was the buffer between him and the angry Mrs. Strife. Too bad Cloud had to die, Leon had really liked him, but getting out of this encounter alive was more important than Cloud at the moment, and Leon didn't mind admitting that in the slightest. Cloud would have done the same thing to him were the positions reversed.

"Children, children, children. What am I going to do with you two?" And then quickly, when Cloud opened his mouth to undoubtedly dig his hole so deep that he was about to pop out in Hong Kong, she added. "That was a rhetorical question and did not need an answer, _Cloud_. Mouths shut, minds open because I'm only going to say this once and if you don't pay attention you are going to find yourself in a world of trouble, adults or no."

Both boys nodded, wisely keeping their mouths shut for the time being, hoping that the fact that they were still alive and in no form of physical pain as of yet meant that their mother wasn't going to bury them alive in the backyard. Or that if she decided to bury them alive in the backyard, she would allow them to be buried together and with a few hours' worth of oxygen at the very least. Mercy was a wonderful thing.

"You know how I feel about keeping important secrets from your family members…" She paused long enough for the boys to nod slowly, each one still trying to figure out where this conversation was going to go. "Now this is a question I want Squall to answer because he's not going to try and laugh his way out of it. Why did neither of you care to inform me as to this little bet the school has going on the status of your love life and why did you choose to not to correct them immediately?"

And Leon did answer, truthfully and quickly without any sarcasm or defensiveness. If she was still using his real name then the danger had yet to pass.

"We just wanted to teach them a lesson and we didn't think you needed to know. I mean, we didn't think you were going to find out and we didn't see the harm in just… Not mentioning it?" Leon sighed and ran a hand through his hair, realizing how utterly stupid he sounded right then. "It's not like we're trying to keep anything from anyone. They just don't _see_ things sometimes and we thought it would be a good idea to show that they can be wrong about things sometimes, and that they can just ask if they have questions or something like that… Yeah… It suddenly sounds really, really dumb, doesn't it?"

Mrs. Strife nodded. "Yes, it does. Now are you going to do something to end this silly game?"

"No." Cloud spoke up from where he had been studying his hands. "They are being nosy and they deserve everything that comes to them. It wasn't a secret until they made it one, so… So now they just have to live with the fire they were playing with."

Mrs. Strife's expression showed exactly what she thought of that, and of Cloud really. Needless to say, she was not pleased, but before she could voice her opinion of Cloud's attitude, the blonde steamrolled her attempt by continuing on as though he'd never stopped.

"Damn, that didn't sound completely right." The blonde rubbed a hand over his face, took a deep breath, and tried again. "Here, let me put it this way: Sora and Roxas bet that there was no way in hell we would ever be compatible together (never mind that it was a bit of an exaggeration on the blonde's part, not that Cloud cared about exaggerating at the moment) and I decided that taking their munny was the _least_ we could do since they apparently care so little about our personal lives. Everyone else is just gravy."

Mrs. Strife mulled this over for a moment. On the one hand, Sora and Roxas were already being lied to about numerous important details, details Mrs. Strife was feeling very guilty about withholding. On the other hand, however, her baby boys were putting up a front against her older two's happiness, and Cloud and Leon didn't have much to be happy about anymore. In fact, their relationship was one of the few bright spots in the older woman's life and the thought of her youngest wanting to tear them apart was enough to cause her to pause.

"Did that sound right this time, Leon?" Cloud whispered, instantly recognizing his mother's deep thought pose. The brunette sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, running one index finger over the pale scar there.

"It was better than what you said before, that's for sure." Leon whispered back, hoping against all hope that the least their mother was going to do would be to make them come clean and end their prank early. He didn't want to think about what would happen if she decided to go with the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario involved wheelchairs and the loss of important limbs and appendages. "Although the gravy thing might have been a bit much."

"I'm hungry. We haven't had breakfast yet." Cloud mumbled in his defense.

"You want gravy for breakfast?" Leon arched an eyebrow in surprise. "That's disgusting."

Cloud huffed in response. "No, I do _not_ want gravy for breakfast. I want it on my mashed potatoes for dinner."

"You know what? I'm not even going to bother." Leon shook his head slowly, the fringe of his bangs swinging across his eyelids as a reminder that he'd been putting off getting a trim for much longer than he should have. "I swear… If you weren't mind blowingly hot, I would have left you a long time ago."

"And if you didn't have the toned chest of the gods, I wouldn't have given you a second glance. Don't get fat."

"I think you've just given me some sort of complex from that statement." Cloud shrugged, clearly unconcerned. "Or an eating disorder at the very least. I could die from anorexia and you wouldn't care so long as I kept my very sexy physique."

"That's about the size of it, yes, and since we're on the subject of your immensely distracting chest… Where did your shirt go?" Cloud poked a finger against the brunette's exposed clavicle, not really all that concerned with the disappearing piece of clothing since it meant he got to ogle his boyfriend for a reason this time. Not that he ever really found himself at a loss for a reason. His reasoning was just a bit hard to follow at times.

"Probably the same place as _your_ shirt." Leon responded, pushing lightly against Cloud's unclad shoulder, resisting the juvenile temptation to tickle the area around Cloud's navel, knowing it to be a weak point on the other man. He lifted the covers and looked down underneath them. "Good news: At least we have pants on this time."

"The adjective describing such news as being 'good' is questionable." Cloud glanced down at his own lower half. "Hey! Why'd you get to keep your jeans, but I was reduced to my boxers? That's not fair at all!"

"Knowing you, while we were apparently unconsciously disrobing in the middle of the night, you got distracted by my glorious chestial region and stopped where you were while I continued onward." Leon's eyes glinted steel grey in the morning light with mischievous intent. "After all, you are only good for your ass."

"For the love of…" Mrs. Strife had come of out her deep thought mode and landed right in the middle of a conversation she didn't want to hear from two total strangers, much less her biological son and her adopted one. "I was thinking for one minute, _one minute_, and you two had to head off down some twisted and perverted track. Why couldn't I have raised _normal_ children?"

"Because normal is boring, always has been." Cloud shrugged and buried himself back in his pillow, now in full on pout mode. "You're going to make us tell them, aren't you?"

Mrs. Strife took a deep breath and shook her head. "No, I'm not. I might not like the way you two tend to handle your secrets, or not-so-secrets as this case may be, but you were actually a bit in the right this time. You could have handled it better, and I don't like the thought of you profiting from the stupid misconceptions of others, but you've already made your choice by placing your stupid bet, _Squall_. Next time try not to use your real name. Someone's gonna figure out who you are sooner or later."

"Hmmmm. Hey, Cloud, remind me to pick a better screen-name next year." Leon rolled his shoulders to ease the tension that had settled there once he'd discovered his mother staring at him at eight o'clock in the morning. Cloud stuck his tongue out at the brunette and wiggled down underneath the covers, heading for the edge of the bed.

"Remind yourself. And there isn't going to be a next year. We're graduating, unless there's something you're not telling me, and if there is, I don't care." Cloud's slightly muffled voice came from somewhere in the middle of the bed as the lump of covers that constituted Cloud Strife stopped moving for the moment.

"Are you making a nest?" Mrs. Strife asked, half not wanting to really know the answer.

Leon peaked under the covers only to find that Cloud had drawn them together at the middle to hide himself from view. "I think he already has."

The lump wiggled again, sliding lower to the bottom of the bed. Mrs. Strife took it as a sign that her son was, in fact, building some form of nest under the blankets, though why he would ever wish to do so escaped her at the moment. Suffice to say, Cloud did a lot of things that no one understood. In reality, it had gotten to the point that Mrs. Strife could do nothing but stand back and let him go because understanding his motives was more trouble than it was worth, since most of the time the blonde didn't know why he was doing it either, just that he felt the urge to do it.

"Why exactly do you love him again? He's crazy." Leon returned Mrs. Strife's smile to the best of his ability (which wasn't much since this is Leon after all and he didn't really know the meaning of the word 'smile') and looked fondly at the now still lump of blankets.

"I know." Leon shrugged. There really wasn't much to say that hadn't already been said in one way or another over the long time the boys had known each other. "I think it might be _because_ he's crazy, or maybe the craziness makes him interesting and _that's_ why I bother trying to keep up with him."

"Or you're just as crazy as he is and don't want to admit it." Mrs. Strife pointed out as she stood to go. She had a turkey in the oven and a ton of side dishes to get started on after all.

"Hey, I admit it… Sometimes…" Now it was Leon's turn to pout. "Most of the time… When it counts at least."

Mrs. Strife smirked knowingly. It never did grow old to push her children's buttons.

"Hey! Cloud! What are you doing?" Mrs. Strife nearly fell over laughing at the expression on Leon's face when Cloud dove off of the end of the bed and rolled away, grinning triumphantly and holding a pair of jeans in his hand. "My pants!"

"HA!" Cloud leapt to his feet and danced a little victory jig, either not remembering or not caring that he was still in his kitten printed boxers (a gag gift from Sora that he had sworn never to wear, but inevitably found himself using when he ran low on clean underwear). "Now we are equal! All hail equality!"

"Give them back, asshole!" And with that the chase was on, Mrs. Strife having literally sunk to the floor in an effort not to laugh herself off her feet.

The older woman's laughter began dying down as Cloud ran from the room with Leon hot on his heels. She had managed to bring her mirth down to giggle level as she heard the tell-tale signs of Cloud's mad dash through the house, the surprised shouts of one of the twins rising above Cloud's cackles and Leon's cursing.

But her calming down was all for naught when she heard another rousing chorus of "Equality!" followed by Roxas' unmistakable gruff 'I'm angry' voice.

"No, this is insanity! Cloud, get the hell off of my bookcase, damn it!"

There was a loud crash and then Sora yelled from somewhere down the hall. "Mom, Cloud and Leon are fighting half-naked in the dining room again! Ow! That was my foot! _Mom_, Leon _bit_ me!"

Mrs. Strife sighed and rose to her feet, wiping a wayward tear that had been pressed out when her eyes had been squeezed shut in her previous bout of laughter. As she made her way to the dining room to run damage control she couldn't help but thank her lucky stars that she had children who weren't afraid to be their crazy selfs.

Though she could have done without the biting.

* * *

"You look like hell, Roxas, and I say that in the nicest way possible." Axel murmured from his spot stretched out on the grass in the Strife's front yard.

"You'd looked like this, too, if you'd been woken up by Cloud and Leon running half naked through your room with Cloud screaming about equality at the top of his lungs and Leon threatening to sell Cloud's kidneys on the black market for stealing his pants." Roxas rolled his eyes and snuggled deeper into Axel's side, debating the merits of drifting off into sleep.

Axel opened his mouth to ask a question, but sighed and shook his head. "…You know what? I really don't want to know."

"You're right, you don't." Sora exhaled loudly as plopped to the ground a few feet away with Riku doing the same. "Leon bit my foot and wouldn't even apologize. He said that he was aiming for Cloud but that he probably owed me for something, and if not, I was bound to do something bite worthy sooner or later. Mom made him clean the toilets."

"That's really disgusting." Riku cringed. "Feet are gross."

"That they are, my friend, that they are." Axel agreed wholeheartedly. "So when is everyone getting here?"

Sora shrugged. "Dunno. Tidus' girlfriend is supposed to be picking him up in like twenty minutes, so they should be here within the hour. Zack and Aerith are supposedly on their way, but if Zack's driving they're sure to get lost at least once even though Zack's been coming here for years. Idiot. Anyways, Uncle Genesis promised he would be here by now, but you know how that goes. Uncle Angeal's probably still trying to get him out the door because he wants to write 'one more paragraph' before they leave. And Uncle Jecht's picking up some mystery friend from work before he heads over, so Mom thinks he's probably going to be the last one here."

"Is anyone from Mom's side showing up?" Roxas asked lazily, not really concerned in the slightest so long as they got to leave before the pie began making its way around since that was the time when the adults tended to turn their attentions to the private lives of the children. "Aunt Elena dropped by last year, remember?"

"How could anyone forget? She chased me around with a baseball bat for two hours." Axel whined as his faced dropped into a pout. "And you only watched! You're supposed to defend my honor to your family! That's the way it's supposed to be."

"Aw, but you know how much you love going against conventions." Roxas responded sarcastically. "I didn't want to ruin your anti-normalcy campaign."

"You suck." Axel mumbled, but he let the subject drop.

"I wonder who your Uncle Jecht's bringing this year." Riku mused aloud. "I hope it's someone drunk like last year. Last year's drunken hobo fight was freakin' _awesome_. Axel, you still owe men ten munny for that."

"Hey! Technically _Cloud_ won, not the hobo or their uncle's friend, so I owe you nothing." Axel pointed out. "Besides, how was I supposed to know that Cloud has some weird deal where he wants to entice hobos into fights over sandwiches? Or that he is apparently much stronger than he looks? That hobo must have been like two hundred pounds and your brother tossed him away like he was a tissue or something. Next time I'm betting on the interference."

"Basically, what my strange friend is trying to say is that your brother is bloody _raw_, and we should invite him to do more things at night when he's more likely to attempt to shank things with plastic knives." Riku finished, sending a smug look in Sora's general direction and pumping his fist in the air in enthusiasm.

"My brother is uncooked meat?" Roxas asked hesitantly. "Um… Okay then."

"No." Sora sighed and rolled his eyes. "Riku has started using the word raw in place of awesome because he thought he needed to expand his vocabulary. I told him that an English teacher is going to hear him one day and brutally butcher him for killing the English language one agonizing word at a time, but he chose not to listen to me."

"I choose to do that a lot." Riku added needlessly for no reason other than he felt the need to reaffirm his presence from time to time.

The four fell into a comfortable silence as they lay out on the front lawn, each one thinking their owns thoughts, Roxas and Sora more wondering whether or not anyone from their mother's family was going to make the offering of peace this year and who it would be if they did, and Riku and Axel thinking thoughts that were most definitely X-rated and unfit for the eyes and minds of anyone.

"Hey, guys!" The boys all sat up as they heard Tidus making his way across the lawn, Yuna hot on his heels and looking fairly disgruntled. "Are we the first ones here?"

Sora nodded. "Yeah, I think so."

Roxas used the support of Axel's head (which wasn't really very supportive since Axel crumpled like a weakened soda can much to Roxas' amusement) to stand. "Do you want help getting all of that to the kitchen?"

Yuna looked down at the small stack of pans in her hand. "Yes, please, thank you _Roxas_, who is _not_ my boyfriend… _Tidus_."

Tidus' cheeks colored and he rubbed the back of his head and looked down in shame, still not quite picking up the hint that Yuna would have much preferred his help, allowing Roxas to take one of the pots from his girlfriend as they walked away into the kitchen.

"So… How's life been treating you?" He asked as he moved on to toy with the silver pendant hanging around his neck in a tell-tale sign of nervousness. Needless to say, he had never really found much in common with Sora, Roxas, or any of their friends, having always felt kind of awkward around them because of the forced nature of the family gatherings and the way the twins seemed to be perfectly happy in their own little twin world, a world that they had stopped visiting so often since Roxas had gotten himself a boyfriend, much to said boyfriend's relief.

Sora shrugged good naturedly, sensing his cousin's unease and wanting to make him feel a little more comfortable than he usually did. "It's been pretty good for the most part. Roxas just got accepted into the engineering program this year so he's been killing himself over some weird formulas or something."

"Wow, I'm glad he managed to get in." Tidus exhaled loudly and sunk to the ground, figuring it was better to stick with the younger twins than bother with attempting to keep up with Cloud and Leon for the time being. The older boys never really made _anyone_ feel welcome. It was almost like they had their own language at times and told no one how to translate for the sole purpose of making fun of them for being idiots. They were worse than Sora and Roxas had been at the height of the twin-ness.

"Your crazy aunt isn't going to come again this year is she?" Axel asked tentatively. He didn't know exactly what it was about him that had all the Leonharts (including Leon even though he was a Leonhart in name only, having chosen to take on their mother's maiden name as opposed to becoming a true Strife when he'd been adopted) up in arms where he was concerned, but he didn't like constantly having to run for his life.

Tidus shook his head. "I don't think so. I heard she found out that your mom wasn't feeling too well last week and she bailed at the last second because she didn't want to have to deal with it."

"That sucks." Axel let out a low whistle. "It's times like these that make me thankful that my family has a tendency to smother when someone isn't feeling well."

Rikku nodded in agreement. "So who's this mystery friend your dad's supposed to be bringing? Axel and I want to see another hobo fight."

"Dude! Me too! Something tells me that this new guy's not like that though…" The three boys laughed while Sora frowned in disgust. "But I really don't know. My old man's been all hush, hush about it since they met. All I know is that it's someone I used to know when I was a kid, but that I probably don't remember him. I didn't bother to ask much past that since he made it quite clear he wasn't going to tell me anything of substance."

"It's not like your dad to be so secretive." Sora mused. "You think it's serious this time?"

"I honestly don't know." Tidus shrugged and sighed. "He's a grown man, he can make his own decisions, including whether he wants to tell me what going on in his life or not. Besides, they'll be here soon enough and then we'll all get to see for ourselves."

"Tidus!" The boys jumped and turned to see Zack trotting across the yard in their direction, leaving Aerith behind to make her own way into the house, juggling two rather large pie boxes. "Hey, man. Long time no see."

"I saw you at your wedding. It wasn't _that_ long ago." Tidus pointed out, completely forgetting that Zack Time was much different from Real Time due to Zack's insanely short attention span.

Zack shrugged, apparently unconcerned with the correction. "Have either of you seen Cloud or Leon? I have a favor I want to ask of them."

"I wouldn't ask them anything right now. They're mad." Sora stretched and stumbled to his feet. "I don't know what really happened, but Mom went in to wake them up to help her with the turkey and the next thing I know, they're running half-naked down the hallway screaming about pants and equality and Yevon only knows what else, and then Leon bit me and had to scrub the toilets. Such events do not exactly put them in the best of moods."

Zack shook his head and laughed. "No, I wouldn't expect them to… But I have to ask or Aerith will have my balls for a hood ornament."

Riku snickered. "As if she didn't already."

Zack rolled his eyes and turned his back from where Axel and Riku were now exchanging a high five, focusing on Sora who was the one most likely to give him the information he wanted. "Your brothers? They are where?"

"Probably in the kitchen where the girls and Roxas went after having to carry heavy dishes all by themselves because their boyfriends wouldn't grow a sense of manners and help them." The short brunette sent a very dirty look in the direction of the still sitting boys, smirking gleefully as they shrunk back in a mixture of fear and regret. "If not, then they're probably in the attic sorting out the Christmas stuff for breaking one of the dining room chairs in their stupid scuffle this morning."

"Hmmm, I wonder if they are ever going to learn that violent displays of displeasure never end in anything other than pain and punishment." Zack mused aloud, motioning for Sora to accompany him into the house. "I suppose they aren't. Your brothers have always been a bit on the short-tempered end of the spectrum. I'm sure that it seemed like a good idea to the both of them at the time."

"Zack… It's never a good idea to steal pants…" Sora answered slowly. "At least, it never tends to turn out in the positive when stealing is involved at all for the most part."

"Then you, my boy, have obviously not been stealing the right pants, now have you?"

And all present found that they really didn't want to know exactly what the older man meant by that at all.

* * *

"No, Zack." Cloud stood in the dining room with his arms crossed firmly over his chest, a poignant glare resonating from his crystalline eyes. The factor of fear he was hoping to instill in his cousin, however, was sorely lacking, mainly due to the fact that it is very difficult to appear threatening when one has a strand of bright blue and silver tinsel stuck in one's hair and numerous strands of lights encircling one's person.

"You look like a Christmas tree threw up on you." Zack pointed out the obvious and then quickly continued onward before Cloud could think of a witty response in order to get off track. "It would only be for a few days! You can bring Leon! I'm sure Aerith wouldn't mind that so long as you refrain from destroying the dining room furniture."

"I am not about to drive eleven hours away to clean out your wife's godforsaken cabin the week before Valentine's day. It's not going to happen so stop asking." And then, almost as an afterthought… "And don't bother trying to go behind my back by asking Leon. He's not going to be able to get me to change my mind either."

"Come on! Petty squabbles set aside for the moment, you and Leon are probably the most mature members in this family, your mother and Aerith excluded and since it wouldn't be a good idea for your mom to go out into the snow for a week and Aerith is going to be with me, there really is no one else to ask!" Zack broke out his infamous puppy dog pout in hopes that it would sway the angry blonde. It didn't.

"So it's a week now? Not even two minutes and the story is already changing." Cloud sighed and went back to attempting to untangle himself from the Christmas lights. "I don't want to go anywhere, Zack, not now. Not with Mom like this."

"You don't know how she'll be doing in two months!" Zack forged onward, sheer determination the only thing stopping him from giving up hope. "She could be perfectly fine and then you'll be stuck here surrounded by your brothers and their annoying friends while the whole school continues to poke their noses into your private business. You can't be seriously telling me that you aren't about ready for some kind of escape, are you?"

"That does seem to be what I am telling you, doesn't it?" Cloud looked up long enough to send a rather irritated look at his cousin and friend. "Besides, Leon and I have school. We can't just be taking random weeks off just because you want us to. Plus, if you really wanted to help us, you'd send Sephiroth instead. The dirty bastard hasn't gotten off our case since your wedding. You try calming Leon down out of one of his rages when your usual tool of doing so had been taken from you by hoards of rabid fanpeople."

"They that bad?" Zack asked after a moment of thought.

"They are worse than bad, and it doesn't help when that silver-haired ego-maniac has been circling around like a damn buzzard or something." Cloud growled angrily deep in the back of his throat. "I want to still be his friend, but he's making it beyond impossible for me to do anything but hate him, and Reno's getting suspicious. It's not going to take him long at all to find out what happened if things keep on going the way they are."

Zack stood in silence for a full minute as he let that thought fully sink into his mind. In the background, he could vaguely make out the sounds of people moving around in the kitchen and someone going to answer a knock on the door, their happy hellos drifting through the house. "This is not the time or place to discuss this, is it?"

Cloud shook his head and gathered the cords up from around his ankles. "No, it's not, and if you're not going to help me untangle myself, then I'm going to be heading back to the attic."

Zack nodded. "You do that…. But, Cloud, he needs to know. Everyone needs to know. Sephiroth should not get away with what he did to you and you know it. Hell, does _Leon_ know? He doesn't, does he? He deserves to know more than anyone!"

The blonde sighed and turned to go, pausing only slightly to barely turn around, silhouetted in the doorway for a fraction of a second before turning away again. His voice rose up through the empty room, the tone not much more than a whisper…

"I know, Zack, I know…"

* * *

The food was done and all the family was gathered together at long last, all members crowded together in the modest sized kitchen as they watched with wide eyes and salivating mouths as Aerith, Yuna, and Mrs. Strife set out the last of the dishes on the long wrap-around counter. The boys crowded forward a bit as the last basket of rolls was set in its place and the women backed away, content to stand in the background for the moment in order to better take in the looks of pure joy and anticipation on their loved ones faces as they beheld the feast that had been placed before them.

"Wow…" Axel let out a whoosh of air as he became the first one to break the silence (an occurrence that was more common than unusual, so no one bothered to think much of it). "It all looks so good. I don't know where to start!"

"You start at one end of the line, preferably somewhere far behind me, and you end up in the front." Jecht's gruff voice was the next to speak out (something also somewhat expected, though the man was surprisingly sober for once).

"No one's doing anything until someone says the blessing." Aerith leapt forward to protect the food from the wondering hands of the twins, who had snuck up to the front while the adults had been busy listening to Axel and Jecht and musing over the strange red-cloaked man that was hovering at the back as far away from the press of human bodies as possible. "While technically Jecht's the oldest… I think if last year taught us anything, it taught us that his old age does not make him the wisest…"

"What about Uncle Genesis?" Sora asked, not really giving a rat's ass as to who did it, so long as it got done and it got done soon. He had skipped breakfast in anticipation for this.

"Not unless you want us to be here all day, boy." Angeal was quick to nix that idea before it could take root. As much as he enjoyed listening the Genesis prattle on about nothing in general for hours on end (the man had a soothing voice and really did know how to string words together rather beautifully), he was more hungry than contemplative at the moment.

"Make Leon do it." Cloud grumbled from his spot somewhere in the middle of the crowd, crushed between Roxas and Axel, trying his hardest not to let the red-head's constant fidgeting get to him. "He's the grand master of speeches after all."

"Maybe you should do it." Leon shot back from across the kitchen where he was being pressed uncomfortably into a counter as Riku kept shifting back so that he wouldn't accidentally brush against Sora. "Get over your fears by facing them head on and all that jazz."

Zack sighed and ignored Cloud sticking his tongue out in Leon's general direction, having more than given up on getting either man to act their age. "Aunt Sylvia? Care to do the honors?"

"Oh, no, I really couldn't." Mrs. Strife blushed lightly, stepping back even further from the large gathering. "This isn't really my family after all…" She took a moment to look out at all those assembled, searching desperately for another candidate to take the burden of speaking from her shoulders.

"For the love of… I'll do it!" Zack growled out at long last as he pushed his way to be at the front where all present could see at least a part of him. He turned and faced his friends and family and took a deep breath before plowing on ahead before anyone could interrupt and drag the whole affair out to much long than it needed to be.

"So, we've gotten together for another day of stuffing ourselves and catching up on the lives of those we care about." Zack shrugged half-heartedly. "Of, course there are some new, permanent, additions to our family." Here he sent a loving look at his wife who blushed and ducked her head down at the sudden attention. "And then there are the hangers on… Nice to see they haven't run you two off as of yet, Riku and Axel." The two boys grinned and sent the normally hyperactive back-haired man a thumbs up.

"And we can't forget Tidus' beautiful girlfriend of nearly a year, along with the water polo star himself, you are going to have to tell me what Beijing is like, buddy." Tidus whooped and Yuna smiled serenely, placing a hand on her boyfriend's shoulder in an effort to keep him calm enough to let Zack get through his impromptu speech. "And then the ones who have been here through it all, raising us through a combined effort, I assure you. The ever wonderful, and marvelous chef if I do say so myself, Aunt Sylvia. And the ever entertaining duo that is our beloved Uncles Genesis and Angeal. And of, course, Uncle Jecht and his new… erm, old friend, Auron." The group glanced back at where the red-cloaked man had yet to say a single word outside of 'hello'. "Uh, I wish you the best of luck on that one, Uncle Jecht. I think you're going to need it."

"And, last but not least, all the cousins who have made growing up in the family a living hellhole at times. And most of us are nothing more than stubborn brats! We may be grown up, but we aren't quite mature yet, are we boys?" The cousins all cheered heartily, each one agreeing with Zack's statement in its entirety. "Um… I think that's everybody, so yeah… We have a lot to be thankful for this year, both in our own private lives and in the big collective deal that is our family, and this is as good a time as any to sit back and count the blessings that we have been given because next year, we might find that we don't quite have them any longer, hopefully to have been replaced by much shinier things to love and enjoy…"

"With that, I think this damned speech has gone on for more than long enough. Let's fucking eat!"

On that note, a rousing cheer went through the people assembled in the small kitchen as everyone stampeded for the best place in line, each and every one laughing and joking with those around them, glad to able to spend time with the people they had been missing all the year long.

* * *

Everything had been going perfectly well. Everyone was getting along, well, they had been getting along as well as a room full of people where most of them were in some way related to all the others could be. The food was so good that it was beyond amazing and was bordering on creating a new category of amazingness right then and there. The desserts were lined out ready and waiting for them to finish stuffing that last little bit of turkey or mashed potato or what have you so that they, too, could be devoured.

In a family that had seen its fair share of heartache and despair, it was as perfect a day as it could get.

At least, it was… Until _they_ showed up.

They hadn't been invited, wouldn't have been even if they had expressed a desire in wanting to come. In fact, there was no feasible reason for their appearance since any and all ties to the Strife family had been severed long ago, not that they had really been all that tight in the first place. They were not wanted, nor needed and their sudden desire to crash a random (or not so random really) family's celebration was not appreciated in the slightest, most especially not when the insults had begun to fly and fists had come out to lay down tremendous punches.

To be truthful, had Rinoa shown up on her own, she would probably have been welcomed, not with open arms certainly and there would have been a healthy amount of curiosity there as well, but she would have been welcome. She had remained in touch with Leon after their strange year-long relationship after all. No, it was with the people she had decided to bring along that lay the problem.

Seifer Almasy was not exactly on the good side of the fence where the Strife's were concerned, what with the whole rivalry he had going on with Leon from the moment they had met, coupled with the fact that he had stolen Leon's girl right out from other the other man's nose, an offense that Cloud had sworn never to forgive him of.

And when Reno and Sephiroth trailed in after them, the battleground was set and the afternoon was suddenly scheduled to become very, very bloody.

"What the _hell_ are _you_ doing here?" To be fair to Leon, he had wanted to scream that out as loud as humanly possible, but he had refrained. It had taken a great amount of willpower but he had managed to keep his voice at a civil level, a strain that had manifested itself in a twitching muscle in the man's right eye.

He hadn't, however, managed to remain in his seat and he felt rather than saw Cloud rise up next to him, fists curled at his sides, body tensed to make a flying leap over the table if such a thing turned out to be warranted. It was kind of nice to know that Cloud had his back, nice in the way that it would be immensely pleasant to see the bloody entrails of the males that stood before him splattered all over to floor with Cloud right there at his side to help him with the disemboweling.

"Just wanted to stop by." Seifer's smirk was just begging to be violently wiped off his face in both Cloud and Leon's opinions.

Cloud wanted to scream at them to leave when Sephiroth and Reno strode in as though they owned the place. Instead of yelling, he found himself biting back a loud groan. This was something he did _not_ want to deal with at the moment.

"Who the hell invited _you_?" Leon apparently had no problem vocalizing his distaste for the situation, though, and Cloud found that he didn't have it in him to reprimand his supposed 'better half' for being a gruff asshole. He didn't want them there either.

Sephiroth stiffened and straightened up to his full height, a look of practiced indifference plastered on his face. "Reno wanted to see Zack; I was merely along for the ride. I would much rather not see your face more often than need be."

"Shared sentiment." Leon growled back as the rest of the family got to their feet one at a time in hopes of diffusing the situation before it could reach domestic disturbance level.

Zack stepped away from the table. "Reno, is it terribly important? In case you haven't noticed, we're kind of right in the middle of dinner."

Reno shrugged, not guilty in the slightest about interrupting. Sometimes it was beneficial not to have a conscience, or at least, not much of one. "I'm always important. Backyard?"

The four newcomers walked out of the dining room without another word, the only one decent enough to so much as send an apologetic look being Rinoa. Leon and Cloud exchanged tense looks and followed, with Zack and Aerith hot on their heels, the young woman turning to make sure that no one else followed. This was going to be a confrontation that did not need to draw in innocent bystanders.

It was an immense effort, but all present managed to restrain themselves until they had made it back outside, Aerith calmly but surely slipping the lock into place behind them as they exited the kitchen door into the sparsely decorated backyard. It was there that the lines of combat were drawn, with Cloud and Leon on one side and Seifer, Sephiroth, Rinoa, and Reno on the other. Zack and Aerith went to take up places in the middle, taking the mature steps to being moderators.

"Cloud, not a sound from you." Aerith jumped into the uneasy silence quickly in an effort to place at least _one_ ground rule before the strangely inexplicable tension turned into an explosion of violence. "Reno, nothing from you either unless you are answering a direct question from either Zack or myself. Sephiroth… Just don't get any ideas… And Seifer… I don't even want to begin to _think_ about what you are doing here, but I will say that if you so much as look in Leon's direction, and the same goes for you, too, Leonhart, then I am going to drag you out of here by your ear and _I will do it_."

With that out of the way, Aerith cleared her throat pleasantly and allowed Zack to take over the interrogation, thanking her lucky stars that all men present were masters of self-control (in one way or another) or there would have been World War III in the dining room mere seconds ago. While World War III in the backyard wasn't exactly the most appealing option, it was the option that had a lower chance of breaking anything or hurting anyone that wasn't meant to know about the private affairs of the apparently previous friends.

"Reno, I want you to think about what you are going to say before you say it and at least _try_ not to be an insufferable asshole." Zack waited until he had secured a nod from the red-head before continuing onwards. "What are you doing here?"

Reno thought over a list of possible answers in his mind before settling on the most non-threatening one of the bunch. Something told him that proclaiming alliance to Sephiroth's crush on Cloud was not exactly the answer Zack was looking for (though it was a large part of why he'd agreed to go along with Rinoa and Seifer's half-baked scheme of crashing the Strife family Thanksgiving).

"Sephiroth told me you would be here and I haven't seen you since you left for your honeymoon." Reno shrugged, trying his best to seem relaxed and unconcerned, something that was nearly impossible with the nigh palpable tension floating around between the two groups. "I wanted to wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving. I see this may have been a mistake…"

Leon and Cloud snorted simultaneously, and Leon spoke, being the one on their side who hadn't had their speaking privileges revoked. "You think? At what point and time did it really seem like good idea to bring a group of assholes with you?"

"Leon…" Aerith's voice held the very real threat of pain should the other man choose to continue. "I would expect something so immature from Cloud or Reno or even Seifer, but not you. Do it again and I'm kicking you out of your own house."

Leon glared at her but nodded, knowing better than to test her when she sounded quite like that. He looked over at where Cloud was locked in a stare-down with Seifer, not particularly caring with Reno or why he was being more of a brash idiot than usual at the moment. Reno was annoying, yes, but the last time he checked, Reno was still a friend and as such he was not to be trifled with right then.

Of course, that could change at any second and Reno was perceptive enough to pick up on it, and was showing a remarkable amount of restraint (something he had more of than most people thought) in order to keep someone on his side.

"Yo, why are we all angry and shit?" Reno spoke up at long last. "The last time I checked, most of us were still friends here, and the ones who aren't, well they showed up anyways, to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. Isn't this like the season for forgiveness or something?"

"That's Christmas." Cloud muttered, but he did seem a bit less tense.

Aerith let the comment go, realizing that Cloud was being much better behaved than she had thought he would. She turned to Reno and inclined her head in his direction before turning to look at Rinoa. "It should be any time of the year. Rinoa, how has school been treating you?"

Rinoa smiled, she hadn't wanted this encounter to have come down to bloodshed, but she had heard that Tifa and her group had come up with some sort of plan within in the past week and that Axel was spearheading it. Thus when she had found out about Axel and Riku's presence she knew she had to go there to make sure that whatever they were planning didn't succeed. It was nothing personal, really.

"It's been fine. My dad's been pestering me for months about what I am going to do once it's all over and done with." Rinoa sent a genuine smile in Aerith's direction. "I was thinking something along the lines of teaching maybe."

"Oh! That sounds wonderful! You know, I always thought I might have wanted to be a teacher, but nursing just seemed like a much better job for me, you know? But I think that you would be wonderful at it…" And with that, the two girls walked back into the house, either not knowing or not caring about the men they had left behind, their cheerful voices fading as the door swung shut behind them.

"You want something." Leon's voice easily crossed the space between the two parties and Seifer smirked.

"And you know this how?" The tall blonde asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest in a defensive move.

"You hate us." Now it was Cloud's turn to speak, his voice as neutral as always. "You never come around unless you want something, and even then, you've already looked everywhere else first."

Seifer shrugged, unconcerned with Cloud's opinion. "I don't want anything more than I usually do: To make both of your lives a living hell, but you knew that already."

"Hn." Leon was now clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. He didn't think he could take another second of this tension without spontaneously combusting. "Zack, go keep your wife company. You aren't going to want to see this."

"Aw… Jeeze, man." Zack rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. "You guys aren't going to fight on Thanksgiving, are you? Your mom's going to be disappointed if you do."

"Of course we are going to fight, Zackary." Sephiroth stated calmly, his voice eerily quiet in the rapidly cooling fall air. "This is something that we are going to have to settle in some way soon enough. It does not concern you, however. Return to the house, please."

"No. Number One: This is not a fair fight, and even if it had been, I still wouldn't be happy about it." Zack frowned and took a step forward in anger as Reno began laughing.

"Oh, it'll be fair enough, alright." The red-head extended a hand in Leon and Cloud's direction, his smirk only widening if that had been at all possible. "I have nothing against either of them, and Cloud's still my friend, despite all the times he's tried to kill me lately. I'm sitting this one out, yo."

Zack shook his head in disbelief. "Reno, you never cease to amaze me with your logic."

"If I don't have loyalty to something, then I have nothing, right?" Reno raised one shoulder and took a few steps back out of the way. "As it is, I have loyalty to both Cloud and Sephiroth, and that is not something I am willing to throw away in either case, so I'm not going to get involved at all, yo. It's like maturity or something."

"Right then." Seifer rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. "Are we going to do this or what? I'm getting bored."

Leon and Cloud smirked and relaxed into their respective fighting stances. Being the faster more limber man, Leon's stance was smaller, more crouched, ready to strike or retreat at a moment's notice. Being more of the deceptively strong persuasion, Cloud's stance was bigger, his legs spread wider, ready to put up a wall to block his opponent if need be. Across the yard, the other two males were doing much the same thing. Now it was only a matter of who chose to make that first motion, the first threat, and then there would be no more cause for thought until someone was lying bleeding on the ground and the one who was not had claimed their victory.

In the end it was Seifer that rushed forward, Sephiroth hot on his heels. All in all, it was to be expected. Seifer really didn't have much patience or self-control after all. At least, he didn't posses patience anywhere near the level of the other three men.

The teams separated after the initial first rush and somewhere in the middle of the skirmish the fighting partners had been decided almost randomly. Well, it seemed to be the most random thing in the world, really, Leon thought to himself as he blocked a lightening quick blower from the silver-haired man before him. Not that he was particularly complaining at the moment. He always had wanted a chance to punch Sephiroth in the face and if the accidental glancing blowing he'd managed to get in a few seconds ago was any indication, breaking the other man's nose was going to feel _damned_ good.

If he could catch up to him that was. Sephiroth was just as fast, maybe even faster at certain moments, than Leon was and it was hard to make any form of connection, not that Sephiroth was fairing much better where landing a blow was concerned. Leon grunted in frustration and lashed out in simple desperation, his longing to make the other man hurt the way he had somehow made Cloud hurt being enough to propel him through Sephiroth's defenses at long last in order to have a rather solid punch hit home right in the hard steel of the silver-haired man's abdomen, a victory that was short lived as Sephiroth had apparently been expecting it and had used the shorter male's inertia to throw him to the ground.

Leon thumped hard onto his back and rolled frantically, attempting to keep a read on his opponent at all times as he rose back up to his feet, thankful that the punch to the gut had slowed Sephiroth down considerably for the moment. He heard a loud cry somewhere off to his left and hoped that Cloud was beating the ever living snot out of Seifer, which, as it turns out, he was.

Seifer may have been a bit of a match for Leon in the beginning (though he probably wouldn't have been able to beat him in one-on-one because of his temper getting in the way and clouding his judgment), but to Cloud he was nothing more than a toy to kick around from the moment the fight had begun. The other blonde was taller than Cloud, and much broader and stronger, but he didn't have the added benefit of fighting a man much faster and more devious than him for the past fourteen years and as such, he was slower, and more prone to being goaded into dropping his guard, something Cloud knew and quickly put to good use, drawing the man out of a defensive stance immediately.

But Seifer, while being rash and quick to anger, was not an idiot and he _was_ very skilled in his own way (not nearly as skilled as Sephiroth but still good enough to prove to be quite the wild card and to make any fight a fair one) and after being kicked in the stomach and knocked to the ground spitting up blood from a very powerful punch to the face, he realized that bringing the fight to Cloud wasn't going to work, and that he would probably fair much better against an opponent that didn't have such a solid fighting stance, so he rolled and changed opponents quickly and effortlessly.

Of course this meant Leon now had two overly large bullies attempting to take him down and that wasn't going to do at all, so Cloud remedied this by launching himself on one of the non-brunette figures, not too concerned when it turned out be his supposed friend when he really should have been aiming for his original blonde enemy. Realizing that getting a good grip in Sephiroth's hair, however, made it nearly impossible for the other man to throw him (and remembering that Sephiroth had chosen to side with the enemy) he tightening his grip and pulled, all thoughts of a proper fight running from his mind as the encounter quickly turned into a full-scale brawl with arms and legs and _teeth_ (Leon was most certainly a biter) going every which way.

Somewhere in the tangled mess of angry, testosterone-fueled boys, the true purpose of the fight got lost and if one or two blows (and teeth, Leon was vicious with the teeth) landed on an ally instead of an enemy, well, they were to be forgiven. It's a hard thing to revert back to the level of playground squalls and the grown men weren't exactly the best adjusters…

Or the best aimers, if the bite mark on Cloud's cheek was any indication.

They were so absorbed in inflicting as much pain as humanly possible on each other that it came as a large surprise as Seifer and Sephiroth felt a burning pinching on their ears. Cloud and Leon felt similar confusion as a heavily booted foot kicked them out of the way one at a time, in order to better drag the previously captured intruders up off the ground by their captive ears, ignoring their squeals of pain as they hovered centimeters away from the grass and the blessed solidness that gave more support than pain, damning gravity and it's incessant hold on them.

Looking up at exactly what it was that had thrown them away from what they were quite happily doing mere seconds before, they had to stifle a combination of a laugh and a whimper of fear, for Auron had never been one _not_ to cut an imposing figure, and standing before one with one's enemies on either side of him with the sensitive cartilage of their upper ears pinched firmly between his fingers was a sight that did much more than inspire awe (though it did that, too).

They vaguely shared the thought that they were glad it wasn't them, though they were quite sure that what was waiting for them in the house in the form of their mother was much, much worse.

"This is not a story I am a part of." The man began, stringing together the first set of substantial words since he'd gotten there hours earlier. "However, it is also not a story I feel comfortable with you playing out in the backyard when your mother has gone through all the trouble of preparing a wonderful meal for us to partake in."

"I tried to tell you." Zack sounded disappointed as he sighed and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. "Fighting this out isn't going to do anything."

"Yo, Zack-man!" Reno grinned and waved cheerily from his place on the other side of the yard, as far away from the fighting as he could get so that he wouldn't become too tempted to join in. "When has fighting ever _not_ been a default setting for these four?"

"Doesn't matter." Auron answered stiffly, not willing to risk getting the ones who had allowed to remain free of his attacks into a fight when he was occupied with the squirming and howling adults he was already torturing. He turned and made his way to the gate without another word, Reno trailing along behind him like a shadow, realizing that pressing the situation with his backup being currently treated like the five year olds they had been acting like would not be the best of ideas.

"Mom's going to pickle our eyelids and serve them on toast for Christmas." Cloud groaned from where he was now stretched out on his back. "Zack, be a dear and just kill me now. You can make it hurt it you like. Nothing you can do will be _remotely_ as horrific as Mother."

"I take it you are regretting your earlier pants stealing?" Zack asked, taking Cloud's pain wince as an affirmative. "Your mom can't be too mad at you. Seifer started it. You two were just defending yourselves."

"If you can name me one time she has believed that then I will get up off the ground and come back inside with you." Leon murmured, pricking his ears for the tale-tell sounds of Sephiroth, Reno, and Seifer being sent on their way.

"That would be a negatory, good buddy." Zack walked to stand directly over where his two friends and cousins were seemingly perfectly content to stay lying on their backs in the backyard until the world ended or it rained, whichever came first. "You have to go in sometime. Your stuff's inside and, while you technically _can_ go to the bathroom out here with minimal effort, I'm very sure that it will only serve to add to whatever punishment Aunt Sylvia is cooking up at the moment."

"And I'm very sure that we are going to move to Alaska." Cloud stated calmly, as though it had always been his life's desire to freeze his ass off in a state that had days where the sun didn't even bother with coming out.

It was a lie. Cloud hated the cold.

"I'm partial to Hawaii… She'll look there first, though, huh?" Leon raised a hand in the air and began contemplating the rapidly forming bruises on his knuckles. "I would say Mexico, but I think you'd get raped."

"Why me?"

"Because you're blonde. I hear they like that kind of thing down there." Here Leon paused for a second. "Hmmm… I wonder what I could get for you in a place like that… I'm sure it would be enough to get my name changed and be given a permanent place far away from anyone with the last name 'Strife.'"

"I cannot believe you just suggested that you want to sell my body and escape on your own…" Cloud sighed and rolled his eyes. "Who am I kidding? Of course you would. If you thought we could make it to the border before she caught up with us, I'd be knocked out and in your trunk right this second."

"Come now, Cloud. I wouldn't sell you right away. I'd have my own fun with you first." Leon sounded mildly disgusted that Cloud would have ever believed that he would let him go without having one last fling first. What kind of ungrateful man did the blonde take him for?

"Joy and jubilation." Cloud's sarcastic tone did not imply either such emotion, but Leon let it go. There really wasn't a lot to be happy about when one is fated to become the pretty boy toy of some fat Mexican farmer or diplomat or something along those lines (and the Mexican would be fat. It wouldn't be a fair trade if he wasn't).

"I don't mean to break up this highly interesting exchange… Leon, you'd be settling for far too little if all you got out of trading him is a new name and home. I'll bet you could get all that and a new slave if you played your cards right…" Zack was strangely calm in the face of Cloud's murderous facial expression but that was to be expected. Zack wasn't exactly normal after all. "Anyway, I think that scary Auron dude Uncle Jecht likes is coming back and unless you want to be dragged into your own home by your ears or some other painful appendage, I would move this indoors."

"It's times like these that I wish I had a normal family with normal relatives that don't date insane people in billowing red coats." Cloud sat up slowly, looking around franticly for a sign that said insane red-cloaked man wasn't within hearing range as of yet. "Or, better yet, I wish I had a family that consisted of nothing more than me and Leon and Mom. No annoying little brothers to worry about that way."

"Would it mean no more Axel?" Leon asked hopefully as he rose into a sitting position as well. "Can we get rid of Zack, too?"

"Of course, as long as you promise not to sell me to a fat Mexican (of course I knew he was going to be fat, you're not _that_ imaginative)." Cloud rolled his shoulders and contemplated lying back down again, knowing that if the scary Auron didn't return for them soon, their mother would appear and force them to dig their own graves since they had been so kind as to lay out where she had always dreamed of disemboweling and burying them.

In fact, Cloud was pretty sure they would make a half-decent fertilizer. There was more than enough bullshit between the two of them to do the job.

"I'm not going anywhere, and neither is Axel I think. At least, Roxas seems more attached to him for some reason than he ever has with anyone else." Zack scratched the back of his neck uneasily. "But this is neither the time nor place to be discussing your brother's love life. Now is the time for you to decide whether you are going to save your mother the trouble of killing you by doing it yourselves or if you think clinging to life for a few more hours is worth the pain that is sure to follow."

"Is this a trick question?"

"Cloud, just get inside the damn house!"

* * *

From far away two cloaked figures watched the exchange with guarded eyes and evil smirks (though the expression looked immensely out of place on the taller one, not that he seemed to care much at the moment.). The silence stretched around them and it seemed as though the shadow of the tree they were leaning against was going to swallow them whole.

"Why do we have to wear cloaks?"

And, not for the first time mind you, the shorter figure questioned his sanity in letting his boyfriend follow him when he was official business. But the blonde had pouted, and then he'd gotten that little tear in the corner of his green-blue eyes that always made Zexion melt a little on the inside, and, to be completely truthful, Demyx did have a stake in this affair even though he hated to admit it.

All that combined had been more than enough to sway the normally lonely schemer to allow something he had sworn never to allow.

He had invited the enemy on a stake-out with him.

"I wear it so that I blend in with the background. No one notices cloaked people like us now-a-days what with all the emos and pretenders out there. To them, we are nothing more than a pair of posturing adolescents out for a good sulk before our parental units recall our persons for dinner." There was a glassy look in Demyx's eyes that said he had caught about half of what Zexion had said but the smaller man let it go. Demyx was trying to be crafty, he was trying to understand and that was more than the schemer could have ever asked for.

"You told Rinoa that Axel and Riku were going to be at the Strife's and that Axel was planning something, didn't you?" Demyx bit back a sigh as his boyfriend nodded. He was never going to get used to this stupid game, but if Zexion wanted to play, then fine, he was going to be damned if he was going to be the one to give in first this time.

"And you enlightened Axel to the smoldering looks that pass between the two kings when they think there is no one attending to them." Zexion's normal blank façade cracked a bit in that way it was prone to do when Demyx was around and his lips quirked upwards into the beginning of a smile.

"This isn't a game of chess." Demyx would have whined, but that would have been immature and would have caused Zexion to disregard anything he was saying. So he didn't whine, but he thought about doing so, just for good measure. "These are people's lives, their feelings. You could be ruining something that you have no place in ruining."

"Demyx, you of all people should know by now, I do what I am told. If my Superior wills it, then it shall be done. It is not for me to question his motives or my own." Zexion shrugged, the best gesture he could give to explain to the love of his life that his hands were tied by some strange loyalty he'd forged long before the blonde had come into his life and turned it upside down. "Luxord, while being a supremely amusing pawn, is nothing more than that. What the Superior hopes to gain out of this is beyond my realm of comprehension at this time. Suffice to say that I have been given orders from the highest tier and I intend on seeing them out to completion."

And then, just because he knew Demyx was longing to hear it, he added:

"It doesn't mean I love you any less."

Demyx's whole body seemed to nod in agreement, something Zexion noted and approved of. The younger man felt so much and held so many feelings that it was overwhelming more often than not in that heady way that only those deeply in love feel. Demyx had been good for him. Demyx meant the world to him and after this assignment was done and behind them, Demyx was going to become the focus of his life once more. He loved his games and his schemes and the thrill of knowing that he was pleasing someone much more powerful than him, but it all amounted to nothing in the end when he came home to the gloriously smiling face of Demyx, the love of his life, he reason for _being_.

"I love you, too." Demyx chewed nervously on his bottom lip, a habit Zexion detested for nothing should ever dream to mar such perfection. "I want to go home. There's nothing more to see here. Look, Riku and Axel are leaving."

Zexion nodded his acknowledgement and waited until the twins and their attachments had driven off down the street before waving a hand in the general direction of 'home'. There was much to think about after such a tense confrontation had taken place. There was much left to plan out.

And there was much left to hope for, Zexion thought as he took Demyx's hand in his own and headed off down the street (the wrong way actually, but Demyx let it go. A longer than usual walk wasn't going to kill them. Zexion needed to exercise more anyways, keeping his nose buried in books all day long. It wasn't healthy).

The tables were turning, but where they were going to land was still up in the air…

* * *

_**A/N: **Sooooo.... I'm am going to bust my ass to make sure the next chapter comes out on or before December fourteenth (the next scheduled date in the fic)... But, as previously mentioned, reviews are the life's blood of my inspiration... So... review? Pwease? For cookies?_


	7. Day OneHundredSeven: Two Fucking Days

_**A/N: **I'M LATE, I'M LATE, I'M LATE... For a very important date for ya'll at least. Of course, considering this is the longest chapter to date and I've actually had it done for three days now and just didn't have Internet to put it it up... Makes for a very crappy excuse, I know. But I also am putting up an extra intermission chapter, too, so don't hate me? Pwease?_

_Oh, and by the way, I know that I said Cloud and Leon's ages were 21 back in the third chapter or so, but I lied. Looking back over the timing of their relationship, I suddenly realized that didn't make sense in the timeline I had written out for myself and I don't know what I was thinking.... So they were 22 then... And it will all make sense as to why I'm making a sudden age change soon enough._

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Chapter Six

_**Day One-Hundred and Seven: What If I Don't Want to Get a Year Older?**_

"I swear to whatever god you have chosen to believe in this week that if you are still standing there when I open my eyes, I _am_ going to rip off your face and make a victory mask out of it."

Cloud was not happy. It was earlier in the morning than even he liked to be awake, and he did enjoy his early morning alone time before he was tasked with rousing an angry Leon in order to make it to class semi-on time, so that was saying something. In fact, why anyone would wish to be fully conscious at five fucking ten in the morning was so far beyond him that it was practically in the next galaxy, and Cloud didn't think that he could stand a long space journey for the sole purpose of understanding why he was being bothered at such a hellish hour.

"Babe… You know I don't want to do this anymore than you do, but it needs to be done. I jogged to Starbucks in the freezing cold just so I could be awake when they got here." Leon sighed as his blonde lover snuggled deeper into the warm cocoon he had made with the blankets. Leon fought the urge to jump back into bed and burrow down into the warm nest never to be seen again, but he knew better. There would be no stopping the twins this morning.

"You lie." Cloud's voice was muffled considering his face was still buried deep in the fluffy pillow. "You hate mornings and you double hate Starbucks."

"It was the closest thing I could walk to since I was an idiot and left my car keys at Mom's yesterday." Leon frowned and looked down at the uncooperative lump that lay before him. "You had five minutes to make yourself decent when I first poked you. It is now five twelve. You now have three minutes until you are being dragged outside by your hair if they have to, and I think you are going to want to have more than a pair of kitten boxers for protection against the elements when they do."

"And why would anyone want to drag me outside in my boxers, which are totally manly by the way so you can just go fuck yourself, at…" Here he paused to calculate the times. "Five fifteen in the fucking morning… Oh FUCK!"

And this was when Cloud's brilliant blue eyes flew open, widening in panic as he flew off the bed, becoming entangled in the covers that had decided they wanted nothing more than to suffocate him to death. He muttered the word 'fuck' over and over as though it was some sort of sick and twisted prayer that would deliver some solution to his newest dilemma. A solution that preferably did not involve going outside into the frigid air.

"I can't believe that every year you forget." Leon quipped, watching rather than helping as Cloud rolled into the closet, having given up on making the blanket release him and choosing to slide on as many layers of clothing as he could with the blanket impeding his progress to the best of its abilities.

"And I hate it when you wake me up with only five minutes to spare and then refuse to save me you fucking BASTARD!" And with that, the closet door slammed closed. While Leon didn't exactly know why (he'd already seen in close detail everything that Cloud could expose while getting dressed) his lover would think to do something as unnecessary as closing the door when he was of the type that enjoyed taking a dump with the bathroom door left wide for the world to see, he did know that Sora and Roxas were not going to fall for the 'I guess he must have gone to the bathroom' routine, which was probably what Cloud wanted him to tell them so that the blonde could have an extra few minutes to make himself decent.

"You have one minute, and I think I hear them coming now." And indeed there was a rather loud rumbling sound coming from somewhere outside the door, almost as though there were multiple pairs of feet stomping down the hall at a full-blown run. There was a loud shout of mixed anger and surprise from inside the closet, though the door still remained shut tight.

"As much as I would like to make some very accurate, but highly corny, joke about you coming out of the closet…" Here he had to raise his voice to be heard above the sudden pounding on the door. "Our brothers are here and I would like to let them in before they break down the door and we end up having to pay for another one… again…"

He took the silence as an affirmative, though he was quite sure Cloud was mentally screaming at him not to answer the door if he liked living. Since he knew that the twins would break the door if necessary, he made the executive decision to open it, allowing two bouncing balls of energy (apparently Roxas had made a coffee stop on the way over as well) to burst into the room where they leapt onto the bed, comical looks of confusion and disappointment apparent on their features as they realized that their prey was not where they had expected and wanted it to be.

The twins open their mouths to yell their request for their older brother to be delivered to them, but Leon cut them off quickly by pointing in the direction of the closet Cloud had chosen to hide out in. Sora's eyes brightened and Roxas' got that evil glint in them that spelt nothing more than pain and embarrassment for the one he was searching for. Poor, poor Cloud. Leon almost felt sorry for him, but stopped himself because he knew he was going to be in much the same position within a few days and making this uncomfortable for Cloud caused the blonde to want to make the same ordeal extra uncomfortable for him.

"Cloud!" Sora squealed as he threw open the closet door to find his brother desperately trying to button up a pair of jeans (Leon's jeans to be exact, luckily the two men were about the same size, though the jeans were a bit tighter on the blonde than he generally liked). Cloud looked up in fright to see his younger brothers staring down at him as though he were the last pork chop in the display at the butcher, and Sora and Roxas _loved_ pork chops.

He was so screwed.

Sora jumped first with Roxas following only milliseconds behind, both small but still surprisingly heavy bodies crashing into him with enough force to knock the breath from out of his lungs. Cloud snapped his eyes shut and allowed thoughts of escape to flit across his mind as the twins gave it their best shot where crushing every last shred of precious oxygen out of his body was concerned. He loved his brothers, he really did (and maybe if he kept telling himself that, he would be able to suppress his sudden overwhelming urge to strangle both of them with his bare hands), but Roxas was bouncing on his kidney and Sora was perched in a place that did nothing other than remind Cloud that he had yet to go to the bathroom and his bladder would really appreciate releasing some fluids so as not to be in _blinding agony_ any longer thank you very much.

And then the singing began, and while Sora and Roxas seemed to think they were excellent singers, they really weren't and there were many things Cloud wanted to hear in the morning, and this was not one of them. In fact, hearing Sora and Roxas butcher what was supposed to be a happy song was so low that it didn't come close to making his list. It was an event that was lost into the dark abyss that made up the swirl of things Cloud hated but didn't realize he hated them until they were presented to him once more in all their annoying glory.

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!"

"Oh, god, Leon! _Please_ shoot me!"

* * *

"I have to _pee_." Cloud complained for the twentieth time since he had been dragged forcibly out of his dorm a half an hour before with his younger brothers' 'singing' leading the way to the cold outdoors. He resolutely told himself that he wasn't whining (even though he was, but Cloud Strife would rather chew off his own arm than admit to being a whiner) and that the insistent pressure in his bladder was important enough to warrant reminding his captors of with every pausing in their horrible warbling.

"They don't care." Leon said as he continued to shuffle alongside his dejected lover, wincing as the twins set off into another bout of singing. This time in German he thought, though why they thought singing 'Happy Birthday' to Cloud in another language was going to make up for their denial of his bladder's screaming torment remained a mystery to him. "If it's any consolation I have to pee, too."

"Well, I don't care about you right now." Cloud responded, crossing his arms over his chest and giving into as much of a pout as he cared to produce in public, and it was becoming public rather quickly, the normally abandoned at this time of morning campus coming to life at the screeching of his younger brothers. "There is absolutely nothing I enjoy about becoming a year older, but it strikes me that I should have everything I request today and so far I've requested to be left alone long enough to take a piss. Why has my request not been filled, Leon? Is this divine retribution for kicking puppies and stealing candy from young children?"

"The puppy was an accident. You didn't see him." Cloud smirked in a way that said very plainly that he would have done it on purpose, too, had he known it was there. "Maybe you did horrible things in a past life. Like maybe you went on a murderous rampage fueled by the voices in your head."

"Why would I have voices in my head in my past life?" Cloud inquired, latching onto anything he could that would take his mind off the audible (to him) sound of liquid sloshing around in the lower parts of his anatomy. The twin's singing excluded. That just made his eardrums want to commit suicide.

"Why wouldn't you?" Leon answered in return, glad that he had been able to suitably distract the blonde from his discomfort and the chilly morning air for the time being. He hoped he could keep it up. There was a lot of campus left to cover after all. "I don't see any reason for your immense craziness not to have been a product of a psychological breakdown in a past life."

"So then you were just as crazy as I was, huh?" Cloud smirked, trying to imagine Leon rocking back and forth in some mental ward murmuring about voices that wanted him to eat the flesh of his minions (because Leon would have had minions. That was just a given fact). "So what do we have to do to get back to the level of crazy we apparently used to be?"

Leon shrugged. "I dunno. Find voices?"

Cloud seemed to ponder this for a second. "I don't think I'd like sharing my head with a leprechaun or a purple elephant or some shit. I'm good staying just as crazy as I am now… Though I could use a trip to the FUCKING BATHROOM!"

Sora and Roxas seemed to notice this newest plea, it being much louder and more demanding than the previous ones. The twins turned to where their brother was glaring daggers at them that plainly informed them that if a toilet was not procured within the next few minutes, he was going to rebel against their good intentions (and embarrassing their brother in front of everyone was done with all the love in their hearts) and kill them before relieving his bladder on their mangled corpses because he was spiteful like that.

"Right, so…" Sora paused and looked at the buildings around him for one that might be unlocked hours before any classes were scheduled to start. Rocking a little to the left, he caught sight of the Recreation Center, which, while the main parts would be closed until eight, the hall leading to it was always left unlocked and if he recalled correctly, there was a bathroom somewhere down that hall. "Rec Center?"

Cloud showed just enough restraint not to yell or inflict bodily harm upon his siblings as he shot off in the direction of his salvation. He wasn't however, restrained enough to hold in the very rude hand gesture he shot back at them as he jogged away as fast as he could without jarring his poor, defenseless bladder into releasing too soon.

"You do realize that the public humiliation could have waited until he went to the bathroom in the first place, right?" Leon pointed out as he picked a nearby tree to lean against. "He's going to run away."

Roxas shrugged. "He's going to try, that's for sure, but there's no exit other than through the Rec Center and it's locked. I'd like to think that all those years Sora and I spent running track weren't for nothing. He's not out-running us."

"Yeah, Roxas and I have got it covered. We've still got the South and East side of campus to cover." Sora grinned cockily and sent a thumb's up Leon's direction.

"You do know that he's a genius, correct?" Leon sighed and tilted his head to contemplate the pink that was slowly gathering on the horizon.

"With computers." Roxas scoffed. "He's not smart when it comes to anything else, so neener."

Leon sighed again and shook his head, more than entertained by the way his younger brothers never failed to underestimate Cloud. Just because the boy _looked_ dumb and _acted_ dumb, didn't mean he really was. Cloud was a fucking genius, tested and proven.

Not that Leon wasn't smart either. He was just a different kind of smart. Cloud was good at decoding lines and lines of meaningless numbers and letters and he was very, very good and reading a situation when the need arose. He wasn't so good with the common sense and tact, but his innate talent to escape using his supreme powers of bullshit made it so that he was very rarely caught.

Leon, on the other hand, loved equations and numbers and the logical order they fell into when he plugged them into his mind to come to a solution. He was also a master strategist, though he didn't look like it. Math was only a path to get to an answer after all, and what journey would be complete without a plan?

Unlike Cloud, he was not very good at reading people, but he was perfect at anticipating Cloud's every move in a way that he could never have predicted anyone else's, having needed to bail the blonde out on numerous occasions when his mouth got a little too far ahead of his brain. If he knew anything about the blonde, and he liked to think he knew _everything_, Cloud had already hacked the keypad and was well on his way back to the dorm… Well, he was probably just about through the keypad at least. Knowing Cloud, the other man had most likely actually stopped to pee first.

Silly, silly boy. Didn't he know that even a second's hesitation could mean the difference between freedom and bleeding eardrums?

"He's taking a while." Roxas was now beginning to sound a bit nervous, almost as though he was starting to second guess his previous confidence where Cloud's compliance in their embarrassment parade was concerned. Considering this was an occurrence that happened every year (an occurrence that Cloud always managed to escape from every year), it really shouldn't come as a surprise to the other two that Cloud had somehow slipped out of their evil clutches once more.

"Leon…" Sora turned to full force of his puppy dog pout onto the taller brunette. "If you bring him back, we'll only walk you around the North Quad and back on your birthday."

Now it was Leon's turn to scoff. "As if your silly public displays of jubilation ever actually embarrass me. But I am going to find him, mainly because it's Sunday and we have work to do and we can't do it if he's been dumb enough to hide in the Quad. That's the first place Mom will look when she comes sniffing around with her homemade cake and if she gets her claws into him, then we'll never get anything done."

"Aw! You can't work on his birthday! That's cruel!" Sora whined, not pleased in the slightest that Cloud was about to be dragged away back into the dark lair from whence he came in order to do something so terribly boring. And on his birthday of all days! The injustice!

"Well, I'm still going to have to go to class in two days when it's my birthday. I don't see why Cloud can't work on his." Leon pushed off the tree and turned to head back in the direction of the North Quad, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that Cloud was perched in a tree somewhere in that general direction, not being stupid enough to go inside somewhere (though he probably wanted to more than anything since it was still a crisp forty-five degrees outside, which was freezing cold in Cloud World) since there were few open buildings and the twins were sure to check them first.

That and when Cloud was hiding, he went up. Leon figured that maybe he was part bird, not that he cared. So long as Cloud didn't decide that shitting on the heads of random passersby was a good idea, Leon didn't give a flying fuck where he liked to go when distressed.

"You guys are both _boring_!" Sora's plaintive wail followed him down the sidewalk, but the boy himself stayed right where he was. He knew better than to mess with Leon when he wanted to work. Hell even _Cloud_ (who enjoyed messing with Leon and procrastinating to his heart's content) didn't dare screw around when Leon was in a working mood.

Leon ignored his brother's parting call and quickly ran through a list of what they needed to accomplish for the day as he made his way back through the sleeping campus. Good thing Cloud had been born early in the morning. Now they had been given an early start and if the brunette played his cards right (and got Cloud motivated to finish the electrical disturbance device they had been working on to disrupt the signal from the cameras they knew were hidden in their room), then maybe Cloud's birthday wouldn't end up being a total flop.

There was really only one thing Cloud wanted after all. He was extremely easy to shop for in that way.

"I don't want to work." Leon looked up as he walked under a rather large oak tree that was growing on the outskirts of the Quad. If he wasn't mistaken, Cloud was pouting. "Isn't it bad enough that I had to wake up a full two hours earlier than I ever wake up only to be jostled around campus in the freezing cold with a full bladder? Do you really have to throw work in on top of that? As much as I hate birthdays and all they stand for, I still think I should get some form of consideration for what I want since I'm being forced to celebrate it anyways."

"Cloud, you never get considerations for what you want." Leon shrugged. "You know that's not the way this works. Besides, Mom will be here soon enough and then you'll have more than enough going on to distract you from your job… You know that thing that puts our brothers through college and makes sure Mom has her meds. Oh, and how could I forget, puts food on our table. I think that one's really the most important since you ate the last of the canned goods when we went home last weekend so now we're going to have to buy some more to last through Winter Break."

"I know…" Cloud sighed and some leaves above Leon's head rustled, a sign that the other man was about to come down from his strange perch. "Doesn't mean I couldn't try."

Leon smirked and Cloud dropped gracefully to the ground, bending his knees to absorb the impact and then rising up into a stretch, more to tease Leon with the sliver of bare stomach that had become visible from the action than any need to do so.

"I want to kiss you." Leon's tone was very matter of fact, and more in the tone of one discussing last night's football score than a passionate declaration of amorous feelings. But then again, Leon was a very straight to the point kind of guy that didn't really put much stock in flowery words and intentions.

"You know, that's very strange." Cloud responded as both men turned to walk back to their dorm room, ambling along at a slow and easy pace as though they were doing nothing more than taking a leisurely stroll around the Quad. "Because I want to kiss you as well. That's never really happened before."

Leon nodded and pondered on this newest dilemma for a moment. "No, it really hasn't. Not that you're not attractive and all… I just… Never did."

"Hmm." Cloud began to study Leon's profile with great interest. "You don't look any different than you normally do, though your hair is a tad longer than it's been in the past. You should really look into a haircut soon… But I don't think that's it."

"No." Leon shook his head and glanced over in Cloud's direction. "You're a little paler than you used to be, but I don't think that's it either. Huh. This is beyond weird."

"You wanna know something else?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"I want to hold your hand."

"Hn."

Both men stopped then and Cloud crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands into the crook of his elbows as though to forcefully hold them back from reaching out to Leon. The brunette stuffed his own hands deeper into his pockets and stared in confusion at the other man.

"You do, too, don't you?" Cloud asked hopefully. Wishing that it wasn't only him that was feeling such weird urges. Leon nodded. "Oh, good. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't alone over here."

"You're not alone." The men resumed walking, not wanting to risk Sora or Roxas catching up to them before they made it to the relative safety of their dorm. Leon took a hand out of his pocket (making sure that it didn't grow a mind of its own and head over towards Cloud) and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, trying to come to some form of conclusion. Finally, after a good amount of walking and a few minutes of deep thought, he came to a solution.

"You're off-limits now." He stated calmly, watching the blonde next to him out of the corner of his eye as a dawning realization stole across Cloud's face. "I can't have you wherever I want, whenever I want any longer. You're forbidden."

"Some relationship we have." Cloud snorted and rolled his eyes. "We didn't even want to hold hands or kiss in public until we weren't allowed to do it. I think we win the Worst Relationship That Never Was contest."

"That's not fair. We're the only entrants since everyone else apparently isn't broken." Leon murmured, slightly put out by the fact that they had obviously been taking each other for granted since they'd made the conscious decision to 'go all the way' so very long ago. "Not that it changes the situation any. Are we really so goddamned used to each other that we don't even care about such mundane things as kissing in public?"

Cloud shrugged, at a loss for something to say that would make it all right. "I guess so. I feel as though I should be upset about this, but all I'm feeling is mildly horny. Since that's normal for a Sunday morning when I'm supposed to be working, I don't think that's a good basis on how to feel about all this."

"No, I suppose not." Leon reached out to open the door to their dorm building, waiting until Cloud was inside and the door had swung shut to continue. "No wonder no one knew. We suck at being boyfriends. Hell, we've never been out on a date."

"We go out all the time." Cloud countered as he started up the stairwell that led to their room on the third floor. "In fact, we went to the movies the day after Thanksgiving. Horrible movie by the way. You'd think talking canaries would be much more interesting and less whiny."

"Cloud, we took the _orphans_ to a movie. I don't think that counts as normal dating fare." Leon pointed out and sighed. "Admit it. We fail at having a relationship."

"Well, then I've always failed because you seemed to have a nice little dating thingy going with Rinoa forever." Cloud's expression suddenly darkened. "Hell, you and Zack and the only ones who knew about me and Sephiroth. Maybe I just throw off that 'please don't take me anywhere normal' vibe."

"I don't think that's it." Leon paused right before their room, torn between wanting to continue their conversation and the pull of the responsibilities that were waiting for him inside the room. Luckily Cloud knew exactly what was going through his head and exactly what he wanted for once so he stepped in to make the brunette's decision for him.

"We can discuss this later… Maybe with Mom. She'd understand all this stupid dating and relationship crap better than we ever could. Hell, If it hadn't been for Kairi and Naminé hanging around all the time when you and Rinoa were together, I don't think you would have known any better than to take her to the closest fast food joint before bringing her home to trounce her at videogames." Cloud shrugged one more time and slid his key in the lock.

"Are you trying to say that I didn't know how to take care of my girlfriend's needs and wants?" Leon asked mock angrily. Cloud was right, and because of that, Leon had finally realized what he should have known all along back then. He had wanted a partner and not a girlfriend, and there wasn't a girl alive out there that could measure up to the way Cloud had always understood him, and that fit just fine with him.

"Yes, yes I am." Cloud responded smugly. "I've never had a girlfriend and I still know that a rousing round of Halo is not the way into her heart… Or her pants for that matter, you cheap bastard."

"Hey! Headshots are sexy."

A loud sigh. "Exploding brains are never sexy, Leon. They just aren't."

"They are to you." Leon shot back.

"Did I ever once say I was anybody's _girl_friend?"

Leon's horrendously sarcastic remark was cut off by the abrupt slamming of a door in his face.

"Hey! Let me in damn it!"

* * *

As disappointed as Roxas still was about Cloud's seemingly miraculous escape of that morning, he was feeling rather pleasant at the moment. Of course, this had more to do with the fact that Axel was now attempting to reach as far down the younger boy's throat as he could with his tongue, and Roxas quite liked the way that felt. If he hadn't then he would have left Axel a long, long time ago, the other man far too boisterous for the normally sedate boy's liking in general.

"I don't think any of the grossness of watching my twin get felt up by his boyfriend is ever going to wear off." Sora muttered, just loud enough for Roxas to hear in hopes that it would cause his twin to take a second to detach his lips. Who knew Roxas apparently didn't need to _breathe_?

"And I don't think he's ever going to care enough to think about what you think is and isn't gross." Riku pointed out as he took a sip of his hot chocolate. "Let me guess… Cloud escaped again and Leon took the moment to go hunt him down to drag him to work?"

Sora let out a great whoosh of air and nodded. "Cloud must have been really stressed out. It normally takes him to about halfway through the last bit of campus before he gets annoyed enough to run away. This time we didn't even get to finish the West side."

Riku wanted to shrug, but he refrained since it would probably be in bad form to be unconcerned about the brother of the man he desperately wanted to date. "Well, they do have the last of their finals this week. I'm sure that he hasn't even _started_ studying. He does that… A lot."

"Yeah…" Sora reached out and stole Riku's cup in order to take a sip. Riku bravely held in his whoop of joy, figuring it would also be in bad taste to squeal like a girl over the thought that he was sharing as close to a kiss with Sora as the other man was about to come any time soon. "I think Mom's worried about them, though I don't see what she has to be worried about."

"They are notorious for overworking themselves, Sora." It seemed that Axel and Roxas had decided that it was time to separate and join the conversation, much to Sora's relief. It really was weird to see _Roxas_ involved in public displays of affection. "I'm sure Mom's just worried about them working themselves into a coma in some misguided attempt to make more munny to give to her. That happened last time her meds stopped working, remember?"

Sora shuddered. "That was scary. I thought they were going to die."

"I highly doubt there's anything short of a nuclear explosion that is going to kill your older brothers, Sora." Axel responded glibly. "And besides, they don't seem any more stressed than usual. I think I heard Zack mentioning something about them going to some cabin in February to unwind, I'm sure they're not going to get to critical meltdown point before then."

"No, Cloud put his foot down. They're not going. I think Zack's sending Sephiroth instead, or maybe one of Aerith's friends. I didn't care to ask." Roxas corrected. "Leon was pissed but he calmed down after a day or two."

"Cloud should go." Sora chimed in as he handed back Riku's drink, completely missing the look of utter bliss on his friend's face. Or, more like seeing it and ignoring it since he was still fervently denying that there was nothing that could happen between the two of them. "The last time he went on vacation was three years ago with our family and he got stepped on by a donkey and broke his foot and had Leon take him home early because he said he would much rather be in pain at home than in some strange place he didn't care about. He's not one for leaving town."

"He's also not one to change his mind once it's been set on something." Roxas stated, and then decided to change the subject. He really didn't care who went where or why, so long as it didn't have anything to do with him. "So when's Mom planning on getting here?"

"Probably around nine." Sora shrugged. "I think she likes being in denial about them being able to go back to sleep once we're done with them. At least Leon chose a good time to be born. Though that's really not fair since he actually literally _chose_."

Riku laughed. "I'm pretty sure that's the only thing he likes about being able to pick his birthday, he also unintentionally gets to set up the time for his torture."

"He also is the most boring fiend to ever walk the planet." Axel complained. He sighed heavily and dropped down to lay his head in Roxas' lap, much to the smaller boy's protest. "You're supposed to take your best friend out to get wasted on their birthday, not work them into a state where he or she is so exhausted all they can think about is sleeping… And chopping off your head because you made them work when they would much rather be out partying."

"Cloud hates getting older. You'd think after twenty-three years of doing it, he'd be used to it by now, but you would be wrong. He can't even age gracefully." Sora rolled his eyes at the weird attitude of his older brother. "Not that he really does much of anything normally, but still. There's got to be _something_ that he won't rebel against sooner or later."

Roxas snorted. "Yeah, right. The day Cloud makes sense is the day that the world ends."

"I hear you brother, I hear you."

* * *

"Be quiet, they're going to hear you."

"Well, forgive me for attempting to get your fat ass off of my fucking foot. Ouch!"

"Shhhh!"

Aerith sighed and sank back out of the way while the two girls in front of her shoved each other in order to get a better view of the wonderful show before them. When she had received a call from Tifa that morning asking her if she would like to join her and Rikku for forcing Leon to release Cloud for an hour or so in order for them to take him out for breakfast (his mother would have monopolized him by the time lunch rolled around), she hadn't thought it would entail a rather long pit-stop to ogle the random appearance of Roxas and Axel in all their public display of affection glory. She had thought they were going to get out of it when the pair had stopped for a time in order to speak to Sora and Riku, but the other two had left about five minutes ago to do whatever it was they did when they weren't surrounded by family members and the two apparently horny young men went right back to where they had been before, leaving Yuna and Rikku wide-eyed and excited to see exactly how far Roxas was willing to go in public.

"Girls, they do this all the time." Aerith sighed and rubbed her forehead with her fingertips in an effort to ward off the headache that was suddenly brewing there. "In about a minute or two, Axel's going to overstep his 'out in public' boundaries and stick his hand down Roxas' pants, or try to undo his zipper. He did that one time. It didn't end well. In either case, Roxas is going to suddenly realize that his bed is strangely nowhere he can find and that will lead to the realization that they are outside and being stared at intently by two giggling girls who think they are hiding very well behind a bush. He will then smack Axel upside the head, Axel will whine, he'll say some snarky comment, Axel will whine some more, and then Roxas will stalk off back to his dorm room with sulking red-head in tow and the show will be over."

Tifa managed to wipe the drool from off her chin in order to turn around and shoot a very dirty look in the brunette's direction. "Don't ruin the surprise, bully."

Aerith sighed again as Tifa whipped back around at Rikku's newest giggle to see Axel's hand become extremely bold enough to risk a journey to play at the waist of Roxas' jeans. Aerith cursed her luck. Why did she have to pick the immature fangirl friends?

She was saved, however with the sudden appearance of Yuna, who walked right up to the despairing girl and took up a seat next to her on the bench.

"I heard that my cousin was over here somewhere." The girl offered up as an explanation for her presence. "Figures she would have latched onto the first display of boy on boy affection she came across."

"Yeah, she tends to do that from time to time." Aerith rubbed a hand absentmindedly at the nape of her neck (a gesture she had picked up from years of hanging out with Zack) and offered up a weak laugh. "I swear that Yuffie, her and Selphie all have some kind of weird magnet that attracts them to gay men within one hundredths of a mile."

"Oh, I'm sure of it." Yuna smiled and tilted her head in her cousin's direction. "She's gotten into more than her fair share of scrapes when someone she was spying on caught her in the act. It's a miracle her father hasn't caught on to her not so secret obsession."

"Hm." Aerith returned her friend's smile and crossed her legs delicately, watching in thinly veiled amusement as Roxas finally caught on to the fact that he was about to show much more of himself than he would have liked in public if he didn't put an end to his boyfriend's wandering hands. "See… There's the whining… Oh he's pulling out the pout again… And Roxas is not pleased… Cue sarcastic comment. One more whine… And they're gone. End scene."

"You spend _way_ too much time around them." Yuna murmured, not quite able to see how one would be able to stick around for longer than a few hours with anyone involved with the Strife family. That was like _asking_ for your head to implode.

Aerith shrugged and laughed good-naturedly. "Hazard of marrying one of their cousins I suppose. But really… They're not all that bad, and they really do love each other in their own ways. It's nice to see the way they have managed to become such a close family when there is so much within them to tear them apart."

"Hey, Aerith?" Yuna asked hesitantly.

"Yes?" Aerith answered, sensing the question before it was even asked and training her gaze to fall on Tifa and Rikku who were now dancing around a few feet in front of them, completely oblivious of the serious conversation taking place behind them, so as not to give away anything she had no right to.

"Do you think there is something between Cloud and Leon?" And then, after a moment's hesitation. "Do you think we're wrong to be trying to push them into something that might not make them happy just because it makes _us_ happy?"

There was a long silence as Aerith ran through a list of ready-made answers in her mind, none of them good enough to give to the sweet girl beside her. Yuna didn't mean any harm, she didn't want to hurt anyone, least of all Cloud and Leon who'd had everything in the world turned against them at one point or another. Her intention hadn't been to harm, but there was no getting out of this without _someone_ taking heavy fire, and Aerith knew this as well, so all her carefully practiced recitals went out the window and she answered from her gut, in a way that she was most proficient in.

"I think that they would be very happy if they knew you cared so much about them." She answered softly, her voice almost a whisper as though she were imparting some great secret. "I think that this is not the best way to go about things, and I have never approved of the methods used when it comes to making a quick buck around here, but this is something that was bound to happen sooner or later, if not with them then with someone else. Something is going to happen with this, something that is going to be beyond the control of everyone involved, I really do believe that, but whether it comes out for the worse or the better is going to depend on them, not on what the general consensus of the population is."

Another silent pause in which emotions ran high…

"As for your first question… Yes, I think there is, but there is always more to a relationship than meets the eye, no matter what the end result is."

* * *

Cloud watched the lines of codes scroll almost lazily down the screen, looking for anything that could be out of place before he backed-up the stream of data and closed out his website coding program (an invention of his that was tailor made by him to fit his style of thinking).This was the second site he had finished within the hour, and the fifth site since he had allowed Leon to come back in the dorm that morning after extracting his promise that he wasn't going to finish whatever moronic comment it was that he had been about to say. He was setting a pace that was impressive even for him and Leon was left wondering what it was that had prodded the other man to dedicate himself to a task that he would normally complain and procrastinate about.

"Mom will be here soon." Cloud said, seemingly out of nowhere. Leon would have jumped but he was almost expecting the interruption. Cloud was many things, but oblivious didn't tend to be one of them and Leon had been staring at him for the past half hour. "I know she can't exactly look at the code and know that it's actually an imbedded video of home-made porn, but that doesn't make me feel any less awkward when it's up on the screen when she's around. I want to get the new sites done before she shows up."

"Hn." Leon leaned over to get a better look at Cloud's screen. "Anyways, some of the contractors were putting up a fuss yesterday about some faulty button they thought you tacked on as an afterthought. They settled down long enough to find out that it was some two-bit hacker. I think they caught the guy, but I thought you might want to know about it in any case."

"Some idiot was dumb enough to mess with my stuff?" Cloud asked incredulously. "Little bastard. I'll kill him."

"Melt his computer, love. Murdering actual people is still looked down upon." Leon patted Cloud on the shoulder and moved back to his own computer, where there was a complex matrix of numbers swirling around on it.

"I haven't done anything major in months. They must have forgotten how bad it hurts to get burned." Cloud clicked a button and the scrolling codes stopped. He switched a few numbers around and set his computer's gears to whirring as it re-wrote the code onto a disk. "I suppose I've gotten a bit lax when it comes to security. My fault. It's _not_ going to happen again. And if it does… Well, I don't know what I'll do, but it'll be big."

"You've always wanted to crash the entire Internet." Leon responded, clicking a few keys of his own as the numbers on his screen melted away into his usual desktop. "Do that. You might go to jail, but, hell, it'll be worth it to see your face on the TV once you finally get caught in a situation you can't bullshit your way out of."

"Have I really matured so much that the thought of crashing the World Wide Web does not inspire the same enthusiasm it once did?" Cloud sighed and rested his elbows on his desk while his computer was moving as fast as it could to do his bidding. "I don't like being mature. Make it stop."

"You do this every time your birthday rolls around." Leon pointed out as he made his way back over to his lover's side, resting his hands gently on the other man's shoulders (the cameras had been properly disturbed since Cloud had figured out the last components to his electronic disturbance device a few hours previous). "You try to put off growing up and becoming a productive member of society for the majority of the year, but there's something about being faced with your own overwhelming _age_ that suddenly makes you think your life is over just because you're not sixteen and bulletproof anymore."

"Ha. Shows how much you know." Cloud leant back into Leon's comforting touch. "I was never bulletproof. Thought I was, but I wasn't. Shit changes. I guess I was going to have to grow up sooner or later."

"Cloud, you are never going to be fully grown, and you know it." Leon grinned at the slight pout that had crossed his boyfriend's face at that. "In fact, I would be quite surprised if you ever learned to hold your tongue, or to say 'no' to Reno, which is something you are going to have to do if you ever want to be considered as completely mature in my book."

"Naw. I think I'm good." Cloud's grin was contagious. "Just because I'm unbearably old, doesn't mean that I have to act it. But, then again, I wouldn't expect a youngster such as yourself to understand my old-timey problems."

"Two days, Strife, two fucking days."

"Oh just bury me now!" Cloud threw his hands up playfully, fighting back a laugh at Leon's rough growl as his wrists were captured. "Please tell me that you'll take care of me in my old age. Change my diapers, push my wheelchair, listen to my stories about the good old days when we walked five miles to school up-hill both ways in three feet of snow, help me shake my cane at the whippersnappers dumb enough to come into my yard? You love me enough to do that, right?"

Leon pushed down Cloud's wrists and pressed them against the blonde's chest so that he was caught in a tight hug. "I think your question should be if I love you enough not to kick your ass from here to next Sunday for being a complete and utter idiot."

Cloud snickered, figuring that the way Leon was now bushing up against the nape of his neck with his nose meant that he was wasn't really angry. "Oh, I already know that. I wouldn't still be alive today if you didn't love me that much."

"Damn right." Leon muttered into the blonde's neck and Cloud shifted and tilted his head to the give the brunette better access, moaning lightly as Leon's lips brushed up against one of his more sensitive pulse points. "Have you gotten everything done, yet?'

Cloud nodded, trying to find his voice. "All that's left is to add three videos to the Marsh account and then I'm done for the week, and that shouldn't take more than twenty minutes at most."

"Good… Because I'm feeling incredibly ready to give you your birthday present right about now." Leon's voice was low and husky and the vibration of it against the sensitive skin of Cloud's neck sent a shiver straight down his spine and into a very private area.

"Mmmmm." Cloud stretched his body from the waist up, leaning back gently into Leon's chest. "I supposed I'm just going to have to be ready to receive it then, huh?"

And Leon was about to show his agreement in a way that most definitely would have made Cloud's day, had someone on the other side of their door not decided that they wished to enter their room, knocking loudly to get their attention.

Cloud groaned loudly in disappointment as Leon pulled away from him and shot a look in the innocent door's direction that would have had the door bursting into flames had that been humanly possible. "Make them go away. I don't _want_ to see anyone right now. I want to have _sex_."

"Good thing you're not trying to be mature anymore. I can't begin to tell you how much whining becomes you." Leon grumbled angrily, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that whoever was on the other side of the door wasn't going to go away so easily. "And don't you dare say what I think you are going to say because you _were_ whining and you _know_ it."

Cloud muttered a curse under his breath but turned back to his computer where he shut down all his running programs while Leon opened the door to reveal Yuna, Rikku, Yuffie (who they had picked up on the way) and Aerith bouncing around with radiant smiles on their faces (well, Yuna, Rikku, and Yuffie were bouncing. Aerith was standing calmly and happily in the background). Tifa had been lost somewhere along the way when she'd received a supposedly urgent phone call that had required her immediate attention.

"Cloudster!" Yuffie's high pitched squeal entered the room before her, though it was by a slim margin since she had launched herself on the gaping blonde the second the door had swung wide enough to allow her to squeeze through. "Happy birthday!"

"Oomph… Can't… Breathe…" And indeed he couldn't. Whereas his brothers had attached themselves to his lower body (probably using Roxas' black magic, which he totally had by the way, to know exactly where it would hurt the most at the time), Yuffie had gone with the crush all of the air out of his chest route. Cloud was desperately trying to be not pleased with the situation, but he couldn't really be much of anything with the blinding pain his lungs were in as they tried desperately to hold on to some shred of precious oxygen.

"Yuffie… I kind of like him better when he isn't half-dead." Leon pointed out as he moved out of the way for Rikku to bounce across the room to join Yuffie in her sudden need to surgically attach herself to Cloud's person. "Though there is something to be said for the fact that he is now apparently incapable of speech. Could you find a way to make that permanent without making yourself permanent, too?"

He ignored the rude gesture Cloud sent him from under the pile of girls and turned to the much calmer females in the party, knowing that he would get more sense out of them. "Hello, what brings you here other than Yuffie and Rikku's sudden need to harm Cloud in the name of celebration?"

"Breakfast." Aerith smiled gently as though to make up for her companion's immaturity. "We figured that your mother would have the both of you fairly distracted for most of the afternoon, so we figured we'd take the both of you out to breakfast today and kill two birds with one stone."

"And these are the times when I wish I hadn't had the misfortune to be born two days after Cloud." Leon sighed, but he didn't seem as irritated as he sounded. Considering Leon had made it his goal in life to seem like he enjoyed nothing and no one, his surface irritation was something that could be generally discarded. "Would it kill you to treat our birthdays as the separate entities that they really are?"

"That would be too hard." Yuna giggled. "Why make two trips and spend twice as much when we can knock out the present giving at the same time?"

Aerith nodded sagely. "Honestly, Leon, did you really expect anything else? At least Cloud is mature enough to accept it. Must be because he's the elder brother."

"Two fucking days, Aerith. Two days does not make him more mature than me." Though arguing about it in a tone fit for a five year old throwing a tantrum every time it was brought up did not help his case in the slightest.

And the sad thing was: A part of him knew this and was so firmly rooted in his missing childhood that it didn't care.

"You keep thinking that, dear." Aerith answered brightly. She knew Leon was without a doubt the more mature of the pair for the most part (since Cloud could be pretty damned mature when the situation called for it), but it never failed to amuse her when it came to pushing Leon's buttons… This probably had a lot to do with the fact that Leon had very few buttons that were so very well hidden that it was so hard to find them in the first place, so it was often thought that they weren't there at all. "So, what do you say to helping me pry two hyper girls off your roommate in order for us to get this show on the road?"

Leon shrugged, not feel particularly inclined in either direction. If Cloud lived through his current predicament, good for him. If not, well then there would be no need to worry about sharing birthdays, now would there?

Yuna sighed, realizing that Leon was not going to be of any help whatsoever and crossed the room to grab her cousin in an attempt to haul her off the gasping blonde male in order for them to complete their original task. Rikku went easily enough; once she was reminded the food had been promised, of course. Yuffie took some doing, and eventually they came to a compromise, which was why they were now walking through the Quad with the short-haired ninja wanna-be dangling off Cloud's right arm.

"You could at least use your legs a bit so that I'm not completely dragging you." Cloud murmured to himself, knowing that Yuffie was going to make anything and everything as hard and annoying as humanly possible because that was what she did. "Fat cow."

"It's not nice to speak about a woman's figure, Cloudy." Yuffie giggled, clearly unconcerned with the fact that her best friend had called her fat. "And I don't even have an ounce of fat on me. You're just jealous of my curvaceous form."

"You've got enough jiggly rolls that Jell-O is jealous, not me." Cloud sneered, one of his few default facial positions. "Fatty McFat Fat."

"Wait. Did I get the wrong birthday party? I was looking for someone who was turning twenty-three, not five." Yuffie returned Cloud's very immature raspberry with one of her own and then proceeded to drag her heels as much as possible, causing more complaints that ended in petty squabbles for the rest of the walk to the campus' main cafeteria area.

Walking slightly ahead of the two bickering adults, the rest of the group was busy discussing the upcoming Winter Break and Axel's infamous New Year's Eve party that never failed to end either with the cops' arrival and/or everyone present blacking out only to wake up two days later wondering where they were and why it was that they seemed to have strapped a bowling ball to their head.

"Cloud wants to go, and Sora and Roxas have been bothering us for weeks, but I still think I'd prefer staying home." Leon sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose in his familiar comforting gesture. "Nothing good ever comes out of anything Axel thinks of. I don't think Mom's heart can handle bailing more children out of jail."

"Technically, Roxas was only there to keep Axel company until someone showed up to bail _him_ out." Aerith pointed out. "He wasn't there because he had been arrested."

"Only a matter of time." Leon stated as he crossed his arms over his chest. "But it doesn't matter what I think. Cloud wants to go and I'm sure as hell not going to let him go alone. He gets into enough trouble as it is."

"Does this protective thing have an off switch?" Rikku asked her cousin under her breath, watching carefully out of the corner of her eye to make sure that Leon was still speaking to Aerith and wasn't paying attention to her. "I don't see how Cloud, Roxas, and Sora have managed to have anything remotely resembling a normal life with him hanging around every corner trying to make sure that they don't so much as stub their toes without him being there to either prevent it or turn the offending rock into dust."

Yuna chuckled. "They seem pretty well adjusted if that is the case."

Rikku couldn't help but laugh at that. "In some ways, I would say so, but in others... Axel doesn't deserve to be treated like this just because he happened to fall in love with Roxas. All he wants to do is impress his boyfriend's family and the only thing he ends up doing is being mocked and ridiculed and mistrusted by Leon."

"And by their mother." Yuna added quietly. "Axel didn't used to be a good person, there is no denying that and he'll actually be the first one to tell you all about it, but he's changed since he met Roxas. He's settled down a bit. He's our cousin and I want help him, but if he can't get their mother on his side, then he has no chance for getting Leon to change his mind."

"Why won't Cloud help?" Rikku asked angling her stride so that they were taken a bit farther from the crowd they were walking with. "He likes Axel, or tolerates him might be the better word, and he wants Roxas to be happy. I know that _he_ at least sees how hard Axel's trying and how unhappy Roxas is when he mother and brother refuse to even so much as _consider_ that he might have made an okay choice with his life, but he doesn't do anything about it."

"He isn't going to go against Leon, no matter how much he wants to. That's just not the way they work." Aerith had somehow managed to transfer the irritated Leon over to Cloud and Yuffie's small fight in order to be able to sneak up on the other two women's discussion. "There's a lot about their family that doesn't make sense to outsiders, and that doesn't make sense to insiders, either. I can't even _begin_ to tell you about all those nights when Zack would call me and rant for hours about something stupid or insane that one of his cousins did that he didn't understand but that had apparently exploded in their faces, and he didn't know how he was supposed to fix it, only that he knew he wanted to."

"Hey!" Rikku jumped and clapped her hands together happily. "You can help us! You know more about them than anyone who's not blood related to them."

"Yeah!" Yuna was quick to grasp onto her cousin's train of thought. With Aerith feeding them information, there was no way they could fail to get them together. "Tell us everything you know about them!"

"Do you have about a week to waste?" Aerith answered good-naturedly, having already deduced where this was going to end. Yuna and Rikku didn't laugh, and she sighed and shook her head. She should have known that when this day finally arrived, she wasn't going to be able to get out of it so easily. "I really don't want to become a part of this. What's meant to happen is going to happen with or without the interference of the outside world…"

"But you said you thought there was something there!" Yuna protested. "If we don't do something quick, then Rinoa and her lackeys are going to pull something horrible and then they're going to be miserable, if not completely at war with each other."

"Wait." Aerith wrinkled her nose in confusion. "Why would Rinoa want to cause them pain and suffering?"

Rikku shrugged. "If you can tell us that then you're already ten steps ahead of where we are. All we know is that she's gotten together an interesting group of people who apparently secretly hate Cloud and Leon, or who for some reason don't want them to get together, including, but not limited to, Reno, Seifer, and the newest addition: Rufus."

"What the hell does _he_ want out of this?" Aerith was obviously surprised. She had known there was going to be a group out to make sure that they won the bet come hell or high water, but Rinoa? Rufus? They had nothing against either Cloud or Leon, at least, not that she knew about. And Reno? He was supposed to be Cloud's friend, not his enemy.

Seifer, on the other hand, was to be expected. In fact, that this was the first Aerith had heard about the other man's involvement surprised her more than knowing he had a hand in it. Although the Thanksgiving debacle made a hell of a lot more sense now.

"Who knows?" Yuna seemed more distressed by this news than before Aerith's tell-tale reaction. "All we know is that they are angry and ready to do whatever it takes to come out on top."

"How could this have gone so damned far?" Aerith seemed frustrated with something as she wrung her hands and glanced over at where Yuffie and the boys were laughing at something the young girl had said. "This has got to stop. I'm going to talk to them. There is no way for this to end in anything other than tears and bloodshed and I'm not going to stand by and let it happen!"

"No!" Yuna was quick to jump in to stop her. She waved weakly as Yuffie, Leon and Cloud turned to send her an odd look at her sudden yelp. They looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to what they had been talking about, much to the brunette's relief. She continued on in more of a whisper. "You can't do that. They'll kill us all."

"They will not." Aerith responded stubbornly. "If anything, they'll get a good laugh out of it and then this whole fiasco will be over and done with before something gets said or done that sends this whole damned situation down the toilet never to be heard from again."

"Please, Aerith, just help us and then everything will end up perfectly and you know it." Rikku pleaded with Yuna nodding her agreement in the background.

Aerith sighed, feeling herself giving in against her better judgment. She hated this whole situation, but she didn't know what to do about it, either, and that was what was bothering her the most. She never didn't know what to do, and feeling that hopeless feeling right now was not helping her have a good day.

She ran over her options in her head. She could go straight to Cloud and Leon after the other girls left and beg them to end their stupid game before someone got hurt, but then they would probably only laugh at her and claim that they had everything under control. Then they would proceed to actually take steps to tricking the school which would end horribly for all involved, even more so than if they just continued on the way they were doing.

She could also go to Rinoa and beg for the other girl to tell her the reason for her sudden dislike of Cloud and Leon and any relationship other than brotherly love they might have. Then maybe she could convince the other girl (who really was a good girl at heart) that stopping other's happiness wasn't the way to go about things.

Alternatively, she could help Yuna and Rikku and, while she would get nothing out of it per se, she would also be able to stay on the front lines enough to run some form of damage control for her husband's cousins' relationship. Not that she particularly cared about Cloud and Leon's damned relationship much at the moment.

Eventually she gave in. As much as she thought Cloud and Leon deserved everything they were going to get out of their stupidity, she didn't think that they would be happy if their relationship became more tainted and twisted than it already was. And when they weren't happy, Zack had to hear about it whether he wanted to or not, and then he wasn't happy.

And when _Zack_ wasn't happy, he whined fit for a five year old and then _she_ wasn't happy.

She was going to help Yuna and Rikku. She wasn't going to like it, and she was pretty sure Zack was never going to let her live it down, but she was going to have to.

"I'll help you."

* * *

"Mom… I don't think they're going to like this… In fact, _I_ don't like this." Sora was shifting around nervously as he watched his supposedly ill mother dancing through Leon and Cloud's dorm room while humming Halloween jingles (which was extremely out of place since it hadn't been Halloween for months) as she threw tinsel about the room at random.

"Mom… I think I'm going to have to agree with Sora on this one." Roxas toed a box of festive balloons that was waiting to also be dispersed throughout the usually fairly bare space. "This is _not_ a good idea. Not at all."

"Well, of course you agree with Sora, dear, he is your twin." Mrs. Strife's enthusiasm hadn't waned in the slightest as she chirped happily at her youngest son. "And I think this is a marvelous idea. They're going to hate anything and everything we think to give them anyway, so we might as well get some fun out of this. Can you please go hide this camera for me, Riku, sweetie?"

Riku looked like he was about to refuse for a second, but he thought twice about going against the will of the mother of the boy he was hoping to at least share a domestic partnership with. He placed the camera with a clear view of the door and resumed bouncing lightly on what he hoped was Leon's bed. It was the neater of the two in any case, and god only knew what Cloud did in _his_ bed. He wasn't exactly known for his cleanliness.

Axel wriggled out from under one of the desks with a cord wrapped around his wrist and a rather panicked expression on his face. "Roxas… Number One: This cord won't let me go so I can't get out. Number Two, and the more important number: I think there something moving under here and I can't get out!"

"I told you not to plug in the surge protector under Cloud's desk." Roxas shot back but hurried to drop to his knees in order to rescue his boyfriend from the cord that was preventing his escape from whatever it was that had gained sentient life under Cloud's desk. "I think he grows things down there on purpose."

"I'd believe it." Riku quipped from his position on Leon's bed. He shot a disapproving look at the heap of covers (and now tinsel) that constituted what they had assumed was Cloud's bed. "It would be just like him to be raising an army of mold monsters under our noses."

"Now, now, boys." Mrs. Strife was still bouncing around as cheerful as ever and her voice held no tone of reproach. "I don't think he's building an army… More like a small city that he can use as slaves for those times when he doesn't want to do his work."

"Now _that's_ something he would do." Sora and Roxas agreed at the same time as Roxas finally managed to release Axel from the evil cord that apparently wanted him dead in order for the red-haired man to wiggle his way out of the small space and into the open, mold free, area of the middle of the room.

"And your lazy, lazy brother makes _how_ much a year?" Axel mused sarcastically. Everyone laughed, even Mrs. Strife who couldn't help but offer up a giggle at that one. "I wish _I_ could be that productive seemingly without doing anything at all."

Riku sent him a sympathetic grin. "Don't we all, my friend? Don't we all?"

"Well, we can't all be certified geniuses like Cloud, and seeing the way he's turned out; I don't think I want to be." Sora spoke up, his tone of voice clearly showing his disdain with the way his brother treated him (not that Sora had any problem with Cloud per se, it was more of a 'he's my brother so I kind of have to hate him' type deal that most siblings shared)

"Certifiably insane you mean." Roxas added as he went back to tossing balloons haphazardly throughout the room, aiming more for in the general direction of the door than anywhere else in hopes that maybe one or both of his brothers would face plant. That would have been awesome in Roxas' opinion and so he doubled his efforts in hopes that such a glorious (but mostly humiliating) occurrence would, indeed, occur.

Mrs. Strife, while wanting to reprimand her youngest for what they were saying, couldn't help but think they might have been on to something there and could only muster up a disapproving look that went generally ignored by the group of young men around her. "Regardless of whether he's insane or not, he still makes more than the two of you have ever made."

"Ow, Mom." Sora mocked a hurt pout and placed a hand dramatically over his heart. "That hurt. That hurt me deep down on the inside. I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight and you only have yourself to blame. I always knew you loved Cloud more than us."

Roxas sniffled and put on a similarly over-done pout but didn't look away from where he was making a balloon mountain in front of the door.

"Axel, since you're the tallest, do you want to be a dear and rig the bucket of confetti over the door?" Mrs. Strife seemed pleasant enough while asking her question, but all present knew that it was a thinly veiled demand and nothing but death await Axel should he choose not to follow Mrs. Strife's direction.

Needless to say, Axel jumped up and immediately went to complete his given task so quickly that Roxas spent a second wondering if his boyfriend hadn't been kidnapped and replaced by an extremely similar young man. Then he realized that in either case he had a hot boyfriend who was helping his mother and he let the thought go, but not before he grudgingly promised to reward Axel in private later for refraining from being a douchebag when confronted with work for the first time ever.

It truly was a momentous occasion.

"Mrs. Strife, as much as I love you and think you are the most amazing mother I've ever had the pleasure of meeting… I don't want to die and nothing can come of this but a long and excruciatingly painful death for any and all involved." Riku piped up from his position on the bed. "In fact, I'm quite certain that I'm feeling the urge to run, but that might just be some residual instinct from all those times I've been chased and harassed by them during my formative years."

"I highly doubt Cloud and Leon are scary enough to leave any lasting mental scarring, Riku." Mrs. Strife answered, her ebullient mood finally ebbing a bit as she found that she was running out of festive things to scatter. Behind her Roxas and Sora were both making faces that clearly stated that they weren't all that scary in public, no, but once they got you to a place where no one was looking and no one could hear you scream, that was a different matter entirely.

Of course, Mrs. Strife (in the way that all parents had) knew this, but obviously didn't care in the slightest. No one had broken anything and the hospital hadn't had to be called. All in all, that was the most she could hope for in an altercation between four to six young boys where four to two of them were much younger and with fewer years of karate lessons behind them than the older two.

"Hey! I think I see them!" Sora called out from his current position of pacing back and forth in front of the lone window in the cramped dorm room.

Roxas and Riku hurried over to look over the bouncing brunette's shoulder to see if they would have enough time to escape before Leon and Cloud managed to climb the stairway, Roxas' engineering brain already running calculations for the merits of using the elevator over the stairs and the probability of the ones they were trying to avoid using their method of escape to get to their room.

He found the odds were highly stacked against them as with his luck this was going to be the day one of them was too tired to climb the stairs and the other decided the elevator wasn't stable enough to carry his weight.

"They're not out there." Axel commented as he got down off his tiptoes after completing his confetti laden trap. "Your mom set Tifa and Aerith on them for the morning. Aerith is going to text us when they leave the cafeteria area so we can hide downstairs."

"Wow… I guess that was just some other spiky-haired kid down there." Sora murmured, clearly embarrassed that Axel had been paying more attention to his mother that morning when she had been laying out their battle plan.

"I think it was Zell actually." Riku stated and he tried to collapse back down on Leon's bed only to find that Mrs. Strife had tossed the last of the tinsel (and about 90 percent of the red and green glitter) onto it in his absence. He ended up making do with the floor. "What is it with this campus and gravity defying hair that is in danger of poking someone's eye out?"

"It's cool, that's what." Axel said with a smirk as he tossed his own spikier than need be hair over his shoulder. "You're just jealous because you got the limp and straight as a board without chemical or heated means hair that wouldn't stand up even if you dumped a bucket of gel on it. That doesn't mean you have to go picking on the lucky ones, though, you bully."

"Ha, you must be on something if you think for a second that I would enjoy having my hair poking up so high it scrapes the ceiling." Riku shot back sarcastically. He flipped his own gloriously straight and perfectly groomed silver hair in a motion worthy of the haughtiest supermodel. Sadly enough he was so caught up in what he was doing that he failed to notice the suddenly blank look on Sora's face that would have told him way more than Sora ever wanted to tell about exactly how sexy he _really_ thought Riku was. "In fact, I think you're just covering up your own jealousy that you _don't_ have amazingly straight and manageable hair."

Mrs. Strife sighed as she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. A large part of her wanted nothing more than to make up a story about going to get more decorations (the red, green, and white blinking lights were looking lonely where they were wrapped around the two desks after all) in order to leave the boys to their undoubtedly humorous fate when Cloud and Leon made it back in about ten minutes, but the smaller part won out using the force of her conscience. Axel had been a big help after all, and as much as she hated to admit it, he deserved to have some sort of reward for his compliance in her scheme.

Not that the others deserved such consideration, but it would be awfully hard to convince them that she really only wanted Axel to help her carry things and not to kill him silently in an alleyway. That was what she got for using her righteous anger on her son's choice of partners. The one time she truly wanted to be nice and let him in on something the others didn't get and she wouldn't be able to do it because they weren't going to buy her excuses.

She brought her phone out and flipped it open, quickly scanning the message in case there was something other than what she expected waiting for her. Finding that it was nothing more than an ETA for Cloud and Leon's arrival (in ten minutes, just as she had thought), she looked over at where her children and their attachments were now involved in a tense tinsel fight.

"They'll be here soon." Four pairs of eyes turned on her in a blind panic and she couldn't help but smile in amusement. Did they really think that she was going to hang them out to dry on this? What kind of mother did they think she was? "I suggest we head down to the first floor and hide in the recreation room. I highly doubt they are going to want to go there after having to sit through an entire meal with Yuffie and Rikku."

* * *

"Mom… Once again I'm going to say that this is a horrendously bad idea and I want the record to show that I bought nothing, carried nothing, and did nothing once I got here." Sora managed to get out all in a rush as he hurried to the door, being careful to only open it enough for him to squeeze his way out so as not to prematurely knock down the bucket of confetti and glitter.

Mrs. Strife shook her head in resignation, knowing that Sora wasn't going to be able to escape the wrath of her oldest children even though he really _hadn't_ done anything. He'd known what was going on and he hadn't done anything to stop it and thus he was going to be deemed as equally guilty in Leon and Cloud's books and there wasn't anything he could do to stop it.

She stopped to turn the camera on before following the other boys out of the room, thanking Axel as he held the door open wider for her while supporting the confetti bucket. She didn't quite know exactly what had changed about the normally abrasive red-head, but if he kept it up, she was coming to find that she couldn't really stay as mad at him as she would have liked, and that was something that made her happy instead of disappointed in a way that wasn't as unpleasant as she would have thought it would have been.

She was literally pulled out her thoughts by Roxas as he grabbed her hands and began dragging her down the hall to where Sora had already gotten an elevator. "Mom, move faster! I know the text said ten minutes, but Cloud and Leon are like ninjas when it comes to people trying to trick them. We've got to get out of here now!"

Mrs. Strife wanted to laugh at her son's obvious deranged panic, but refrained, mainly because she suddenly realized that she hadn't told anyone that Cloud and Leon had been slated to arrive in ten minutes.

How the hell did Roxas always _know_ shit like that?

"Mom… You're crushing my lungs… I seriously can't breathe…" Cloud managed to gasp out around his mother's soul crushing hug (the third of its kind he'd received that day).

"You also can't kill your brothers or their friends this way either." Mrs. Strife chirped gaily as she tightened her hold on the struggling blonde, glancing down at her feet to make sure Leon was still trapped within the bundle of tinsel he'd fallen head-first into after he'd tripped on one of Roxas' strategically placed balloons. "Happy birthday, boys! You're finally another year older and wiser!"

"Mom… If I promise not to kill them, will you let me go?" Cloud asked, his voice perilously close to pleading. "Besides, why punish them for something that has _your_ name written all over it?"

"Fuck! I think this tinsel bit me!" Leon growled out, causing Mrs. Strife to release Cloud so that she could better laugh at his predicament. Much to his horror (but not surprise), instead of helping, Cloud merely looked at him and joined his mother in her reaction to his plight, his sudden happier outlook being all that was needed to spur the four boys hovering nervously in the doorway into laughter for the first time since entering the room two minutes previous.

"You bloody traitor!" Leon screeched as the one person he had hoped would rush to his aid in order to acquire an ally for the bloodshed that should have already been happening did nothing more than laugh at his agony. And it _was_ agony and nothing anyone else said or did was going to change his mind on that point. "See if you get your birthday present now, you dirty ho!"

Cloud looked supremely unconcerned and it was Sora who ended up coming to his aid in hopes that he would escape the brunt of the other brunette's anger if he helped him now.

It didn't help much if the very rude shove he received for his efforts was any indication.

"I'll WOUND you!" Leon roared and launched himself at his roommate, an interesting development in the minds of the boys who actually done the room decorating that had led to Leon's embarrassing predicament.

Of course, in hindsight, it shouldn't have been all _that_ surprising since Cloud had refused to help the struggling brunette and that had placed him firmly on the side of his tormentors. While Mrs. Strife would have protected Sora, Roxas, and Riku to the death because of their help (and even Axel, too, though she was still having trouble admitting to it), she would do nothing to stop Leon from mortally wounding Cloud, it being her opinion that they had to deal with their own homicidal tendencies since they had gone into their relationship knowing full well what the other was capable of when in a blind rage.

Leon knew this and thus chose the face of his anger appropriately.

To his credit, Cloud didn't run away screaming like most men would have done. In fact, he didn't move much at all, just a few inches to the left, enough so that Leon flew past him and went face-first into a knee high pile of green, red, blue, and purple glitter.

"He's going to kill you once he regains the proper use of his body." Mrs. Strife pointed out calmly as she watched her adopted son sputter and flail around in the sea of glitter. Cloud flicked some confetti from off his clothing and shrugged. "If you want to move home for a few days, you can, honey. I won't hold it against you."

Cloud shook his head and offered a hand to his struggling boyfriend. Leon glared him but took it grudgingly, knowing that killing Cloud now wouldn't be nearly as satisfying as punishing him later. And he was going to be punished, that was for certain. However, seeing as what he had in mind wasn't something he was comfortable with playing out in front of his mother (or anyone really), he refrained, doing nothing more than sending Cloud a very dirty sign that promised nothing but pain for the blonde's future.

"Mom…" Sora was apparently the champion of pointing out when things obviously weren't good ideas that day, which, considering how he had drug Cloud out of bed to be marched and shown off around campus not even seven hours previous, was highly ironic and slightly hypocritical of him. "Can we just give them the presents and the cake and _go_? I'm sure they have better things to do than hang out with us all day."

Such as clean their room, he wanted to add but didn't at the last second, correctly realizing that nothing good would come of saying such a thing.

"_Sora_.." Roxas nudged his twin in the shoulder hard enough to send him flying a few feet into a large, plastic Christmas tree their mother had procured from seemingly nowhere at all, since it wasn't something they could remember ever seeing in the attic with the rest of the decorations. "Stop being such a sullen jerk. Seriously, what's your deal today?"

"Nothing." Sora returned petulantly, but there _was_ something wrong, everyone present could see that. They just didn't quite know what to do about it at the moment so they let it go in favor of retrieving the presents that had been placed neatly (unlike anything else in the room) on Leon's desk.

"So… I uh, got you stuff." Axel started off in his normal supremely eloquent way. He offered up two similarly wrapped gifts done it what looked to be tin foil. "I, uh, ran out of wrapping paper after Cloud's gift (he did not mention that he'd had a full roll before he'd _begun_ wrapping Cloud's gift, but thought they really didn't need to know all that for obvious reasons) and didn't think it would be fair to only have Leon's gift wrapped crapily… So, here you are."

"Nice to see you're all for equality today." Cloud offered up sarcastically but he didn't look too put out as he took his present anyway, Leon doing the same after a split second's hesitation.

They each began to unwrap at the same time with glitter and confetti falling out of their clothing and hair and dropping onto the already sparkly carpet as they went. Soon there was a small pile of sparkly tin foil on top of the glitter to add to the mess as Leon and Cloud sat staring at the gift Axel had gotten them.

They had been given the same thing because while Axel was fairly imaginative, he wasn't all that imaginative and he had figured that whatever Cloud would like, Leon would at least keep, if only to make sure that Cloud knew he had something the blonde wanted if whatever Cloud received should happen to break or become lost. Also, he had no earthly idea what Leon would like or want since he tended to spend most of his time staying as far away from the vicious brunette as possible for the most part.

And Cloud did indeed like it, though it seemed a bit on the tasteless side to him and he was pretty sure that he shouldn't have opened such a gift in front of his mother. For it was a pen, but since this was Axel and nothing could be normal where he was concerned, it wasn't your average pen. In fact, it was a pen in the shape of a rather generously formed generic woman who slowly undressed herself the more you used the pen until she was reduced to nothing, in which you were required to press on a rather private part of her body in order to re-clothe her.

Though he was about as gay as they came, Cloud's inner five year old was pleased with such an immature gift that he didn't even bother to waste time wishing it was a highly close resemblance of Leon instead.

Leon, of course, was not pleased, but since Axel had plainly tried this time as opposed to just picking up something from his room, the brunette didn't really feel the need to make fun of him or look down on his gift for the time being. At least not with his mother watching over him like a hawk.

Of course, that didn't mean he couldn't laugh right along with everyone else in the room once the shock that Axel indeed _would_ be brave enough to give him such a present wore off.

"Wow…" Riku was the first one to regain his voice. "Why have you never given _me_ something this awesome for my birthday? I thought I was your friend!"

Axel smirked, pleased that no one was yelling as of yet and that Leon hadn't shoved the pen into his eye merely out of spite. "I didn't think of it before. This particular present came to me as if in a dream and they happened to be the next people to have birthdays. Timing misfortune, next time try to make sure to be born right after I have a burst of inspiration."

"Yeah, I'll be sure to work on that for the next time." Riku remarked drily, but it was plain that he was still highly amused.

Mrs. Strife, having had her laugh along with all the others, mainly because she really did find such a gift humorous, especially knowing the orientations of the receivers of such a gift, but also because she was too shocked to really be able to think of much else to say, finally regained control of herself enough to sniff in disdain. Or mock disdain because, damn, that was such a classic Axel gift that it was almost sad and if anyone could find fault with it then they were a hard-hearted person indeed.

"I would say that I can't believe you would do something like this, but that would be a lie." She didn't sound too angry, Axel noted hopefully. Maybe that meant he was going to get off the hook if not score at least _some_ brownie points for audacity. "As it is, you did do it, they seem to like it, and they are going to be remembering their manners within a few seconds if I am correct, which I am."

"Oh… Right. Thanks, Axel. I love it!" Cloud seemed more cheerful than ever and actually threw a smile at the red-head for once instead of his usual smirk or scowl. Axel internally cheered.

"He's going to use it until it runs out of ink, and I'm never going to hear the end of it." Leon grumbled, but he also didn't seem as angry as Axel thought he was going to be. "But thank you. I don't think that 'thoughtful' is really the word I'm looking for here, but it was a gift you obvious spent time on, and I thank you for that as well."

And that was about as good as he was going to get from either of them (and really that was about the most Leon had spoken to him in a polite tone of voice than he had since Axel had met him, so he wasn't about to go begging for more), so they moved on, with Riku being the one to present the next gifts.

His were slightly better wrapped than Axel's (he'd gotten Kairi to do it for him) and Cloud and Leon once again opened their separate presents at the same time, revealing to different gifts since Riku was a firm believer in never using the same gift twice.

For Leon he had gone conservative and had gotten him a bottle of silver polish, a nice plastic mug with the Radiant Garden University logo emblazoned on it, and a nice gift card to a book store he knew Leon frequented downtown. They were all things Leon needed and had been meaning to pick up once he found the time (but since he _was_ a working college student, he never had any time), and the brunette found that he was a bit touched that Riku had been paying enough attention to his conversations to know this.

Cloud, on the other hand, was presented with something practical, which was a gift certificate to a coffee shop that Cloud claimed he couldn't live without, and well as something a bit on the humorous side, the game of Life.

"Since they don't really sell lives outside of the black market, I figured this was as close to a new one as you were going to be able to get." Riku smirked as that comment got a few sniggers out of those watching the gift giving. "I expect you will cherish it always."

"And I expect I'm going to shove it so far up your ass that you'll be spitting pieces for a week of you don't shut your trap right this second." At his mother's potent glare (Riku had a point in Mrs. Strife's opinion. Both of her elder sons really did need a life outside of themselves and college before they went insane), he shrugged. "But thanks. I'll use the gift card at least."

"The second you walk out the door, he's going to be begging me to play with him." Leon stated and ignored the very rude gesture his roommate sent him because of it. Apparently, he had designated himself official spokesperson of all the things Cloud was really saying underneath his thank-yous. "And thank you for my gift. There are a few books at the store I've had my eye on for some time."

"Wow… For the first time in ever, Axel's gift was better than Riku's. I fear for my soul for the end of the world must be nigh!" That outburst didn't go over well in the slightest and the next thing Sora knew, he found himself on the floor and being sufficiently squashed by Riku's body, which was much heavier than it looked. "Owie…"

"Since Sora's occupied at the moment…" Roxas sniggered at the thought of what Riku really wanted to do with a panting and squirming Sora under him, but then continued onward because thinking about his twin in that way was slightly disturbing. "I guess it's my turn."

He hadn't bothered with attempting to wrap his presents, knowing that it would have been a waste of his time and more frustration than it was worth, so his presents were done in the same paper as Sora's (since Sora had been the only one to inherit the wrapping gene in their family), though his were considerably smaller than his twin's.

Once again wrapping paper flew as both men eagerly (though the only one with a remotely eager face on was Cloud) tore into their newest gifts.

Leon unwrapped a new wristwatch, and a fairly expensive looking one at that, which was nice and thoughtful of his normally apathetic brother. He immediately put it on and sent a generous smile in his adopted brother's direction.

Cloud was gifted with a steel knife that had interesting hieroglyphics etched into the blade, and since he loved accumulating sharp objects (mainly for the fear factor than any real practical use), it made him smile, too.

"Thank you." They chirped at the same time, surprising even themselves. Glossing over it they reached out to take Sora's gifts from their mother since Sora was still being punished for his earlier remarks.

Awaiting Leon was the strangest gift he had yet to receive, and that was including Axel's pen. It was a huge box, but once he'd opened it, he found that it was empty except for a small envelop at the bottom. Fishing it out he carefully opened the flap and slid out a pink form from inside.

"It's an… invoice? Maybe?" He looked confused and turned to where Sora was now being released from the clutches of his tormentor for an explanation. "I fold. What is it?"

"It is an invoice… For a new TV that's going to be delivered to your apartment next week." Sora looked smug at first, but once he noticed that Leon's face had yet to go from questioning to grateful, he elaborated. "You're always complaining that Cloud hogs the TV in your living room and never wants to watch anything you do, so I got you a TV to put in your room."

"You seriously bought him a TV?" Cloud asked as he opened his own box only to find there was also nothing more than an envelope inside. "What'd you get me? A toaster? I like toast."

"No, you have a toaster already." Sora answered sarcastically.

"Yeah, but what if I said Leon hogs that and I am unable to get my perfectly crispy toast?" Cloud seemed to really ponder this question seriously for a minute, and it was extremely hard to tell whether he was just playing around or whether he really meant it. "I think I'd be sad if I couldn't get my toast…"

"And I think you're an idiot." Roxas piped up. It _was_ his job to point out idiots after all. Dating one tended to give him that privilege. "What _did_ you get him, Sora?"

"Some stupid motorcycle part he had on hold at the shop. You really should pay off those people up front. They didn't seem pleased about ordering something that hadn't been paid for yet." Sora would have said more, but he was stopped by Cloud's sudden need to attach himself to his younger brother's person and squeeze tighter than even he had been squeezed earlier. "Owie… What is it with people and the crushing today?"

"It makes for good shows of emotion I suppose." Axel pointed out.

"Thank you, Sora." Leon chimed in from where he had finished reading over the details on his new TV. It was a nice one, too. Leon was pleased.

"Not a problem." Sora managed to get out after pushing Cloud off of him and gathering some air back into his battered lungs. "Ow… Just make sure he never hugs me again and we're even."

"Done." Leon placed the invoice back in it envelope and turn to see his mother holding out a piece of paper towards him.

"Hey! Where's my present?" Cloud looked wounded at the thought of his mother not getting him something, but that could have been acting on his part. With him it was always hard to tell. "It's not even his birthday."

"Calm down, Cloud." Mrs. Strife said as Leon reached out and took the envelope. "It's for both of you."

"So we can't just celebrate on the same day anymore, now we've got to share the same gift?" Cloud crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture that ended up being more pouty than angry. "Damn the person who said life wasn't fair to hell and back."

"Cloud…" The blonde looked up in concern as he heard a ragged note in his boyfriend's voice, a note that actually came across to the others looking on as well. They stopped whatever fidgeting they were doing and trained their eyes on where Leon's gaze was locked onto the paper in his hand. "She arranged payment on our rent for all of next year…"

"Mom…" Cloud now looked like he was close to tears. "We can't accept that."

"Yes you can and you will since it's already been done and taken care of." Mrs. Strife's tone was firm, but there was something in her eyes, she was almost pleading with them to accept. The twins were staring at her in blatant shock while Riku and Axel moved around nervously and Cloud and Leon struggled to gather together some semblance of thought. "I don't want to hear anything more about it or I'm going to have to announce something you would much rather me not announce as of yet."

That was enough to have both her eldest hugging her and her youngest wondering exactly what it was that Cloud and Leon didn't want their mother to say out loud. They didn't have time to think on this, however, since they were quickly drawn into the hug as well. Even Axel and Riku were drawn in and they stayed like that, locked in a moment in which they came together as a family in a way that some biological families had trouble doing.

They eventually separated, of course, and Leon gave Cloud his present, which Cloud quickly knocked him to the floor and rolled him through a pile of glitter that's how excited he was about it, and they continued on with the celebrations without mentioning their mother's gift even once.

And, as their mother walked out the door and they hugged her for the last time until Christmas, they realized that she was stronger than all of them.

And that was something they were perfectly happy with.

* * *

"Leon… I think Mom's sicker than she's letting on." Cloud and Leon were curled up on Cloud's bed (since it had only had tinsel on it and not glitter) each one wrapped in Leon's present to Cloud, a blanket that had sleeves, which Cloud reverently called a 'Snuggie'. He'd even gotten one for himself since he knew that Cloud wasn't going to want to share. Cloud reached out to rest a hand on Leon's waist as he laid his head on the other man's chest and sighed deeply.

"I know she is." Leon answered, shifting a bit so that he could get his own arm out from under Cloud's body in order to wrap it around the blonde's shoulder. "She doesn't think she's going to last much longer than a year or so."

Cloud nodded but said nothing. There really wasn't anything else to say.

"You knew it was going to happen sooner or later… This disease… It only gets worse, never better, and she's had so many years of good health that it was bound to catch up sooner or later."

"It's AIDS, Leon, call it by its name." Leon flinched at the tone of Cloud's voice and tightened his grip on Cloud, burying his nose in the blonde's hair.

"That makes it…" Here Leon stopped, suddenly unable to make his throat work properly.

"Yeah, it makes it real, doesn't it, but it never really was fake." Cloud rubbed his head gently against Leon's chest and sighed again. "I don't want her to die."

"No one does." Leon stated simply, though there was nothing simple or logical about their conversation at all, just as there was nothing simple or logical about death. "She's too strong to, die, Cloud. I know that's not true and no one's too strong, but damn it she is!"

"That makes no sense."

"No, it doesn't, does it?"

Another sigh. "It's not either of our faults."

Leon jolted a bit at that and lifted his head to look down at Cloud. "Who are you and what have you done with Cloud?"

"You felt guilty about it, didn't you? Way back then when we first found out? You felt guilty but you never said anything, you just ran away for a few days and came back with a new job and a new hope that you were going to be able to make everything right if only you just tried hard enough. I never asked what it was that you did in those few days to come to terms with what had happened and that you had nothing to do with it, and you never told, but I knew you were guilty."

"You never said anything."

"Neither did you."

Now it was Leon's turn to sigh, but Cloud wasn't done speaking yet. "Mom never wanted to put this burden on our shoulders. I knew that, but I couldn't help it. I couldn't find a way to make her see that I wanted to share her responsibility, I'm not good at just showing up and taking over like you are, so I made up that I was feeling guilty about not being able to do something back then to get her to allow me to do something now."

"It worked."

"I know, but after telling everyone that I was guilty for so long, I suddenly, well… I became guilty." Cloud seemed to be fighting some deeper emotion for a moment. "But it wasn't my fault. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't Mom's fault, and as much as I don't want to admit it, it wasn't even Dad's fault. It just… happened. If it hadn't been her, then it would have been someone else and I would never in a million years wish something like this upon another family. As much as it hurts us now, I know that we are stronger than average and we are going to make it through this with our family intact…"

"We have to."

Leon pondered this for a minute. "It doesn't matter whether we have to or not. We're going to. I didn't spend my whole life looking for a family to lose it now."

Cloud snickered. "You didn't spend your whole life looking for anything. We were right here all along, ever since you tripped me that first day at our Boy Scout meeting. It took you long enough to figure it out, and even longer to realize that I loved you pretty much from that moment you tripped me, but you got there in the end. Didn't take most of your life, though."

"Cloud, five year olds don't fall in love." Leon responded, trying hard not to display any of the heavy emotions that were weighing down on him.

"Yeah, normal ones don't, but since when have I ever been normal?"

"Touché, touché."

* * *

_**A/N: **Yeah... So a lot of the birthday traditions (especially the wandering around outside early in the morning) are true traditions in my family. And, having been born on Valentine's Day with my friend being born on the sixteen, two days later, we tend to have our birthday's lumped together into one large (generally three day long) celebration and that's kind of what I based that on._

_Oh, and if you don't know what a Snuggie is, get with the times! It's pretty much the most amazing thing ever and I have been begging for one to no avail for months. Google it and change your life forever!_

_SCOUT OUT!!_


	8. Intermission

_**Intermission: Final Exams**_

_Final: Creative Writing_

_Proctor: Professor Vincent Valentine, Ph.D._

_Prompt: Describe your perfect partner. Attempt to use first person and an active tone of voice. It can be a physical description if you so choose, though that is highly shallow of you. For shame._

* * *

**Leon Strife-Leonhart's Response:**

There isn't really a definitive physical stature I look for in a partner, though there are a few purely physical aspects I do wish to indulge in from time to time, and it always helps if they have an extraordinary body to back up their spiritual attractiveness, but I digress from the main point.

Were I to be searching for a mate at this time in my life, I would require someone that is emotionally mature and strong and who can stand up for themselves without demanding or asking for my help. There are many people I would lay down my life for in this world, though there are even fewer who know their status for a fact, but someone I would have hopes of settling down with would most definitively be one who would be much better off my list than on it. Basically, so long as they can handle their own problems, I don't have a problem with them.

However, on the other hand, there are those out there who want nothing more than to protect their loved ones and essentially hide them from the world in the hopes that they never get hurt. This is unrealistic and unappreciated. I have no patience for a lover that would hold me back and claim it was for my own good. I am very much a person who knows what I want from life and how I plan to get there and I do not want in the slightest for someone to hop into the backseat, seemingly just along for the ride, only to find that they dream of nothing more than maneuvering me into wherever it is they want for me to go with the minimum amount of pain on my behalf. It would be like never taking off the training wheels or driving with the airbags deployed in accordance with my previous driving metaphor. In the end, it is not wise to be coddled and left thinking that nothing can touch you or harm you so long as you are dependent on the person you claim to love.

My family always has and always will come first. From the moment I met them when I was five, I became a part of a close-knit group of wonderful people, and I love them as much as a person like me can love much of anything and they are going to still be there whether I have a partner or not. If someone I wished to take up a relationship with didn't like my family, or didn't want to spend time with them for any reason, they would suddenly find that they no longer had a need to for I would never stay in a relationship for the slightest of seconds with such a person.

It wouldn't hurt if they didn't come with an extensive train of emotional baggage. There is nothing more irritating than someone going on about something that happened to them years past that no one can do anything about. In fact, humanity in general is a rather self-centered, mopey race that lives far too much in the past and doesn't take nearly enough stock in the future.

In closing, since there is no one at the moment who meets every single quality mentioned above, I suppose I am going to have to settle with someone who meets three out of the four criteria. And, as previously stated above, I am not, nor do I think I will be anytime soon, looking for a partner and thus this essay is ridiculous and laughable at best, and I can't believe I wasted three sheets of paper and one hour on it when Cloud's been asleep for at least forty-five minutes after writing maybe his name… Or at least one sentence.

Have a happy holiday Professor Valentine.

**Leon's Grade:**

B-

* * *

**Cloud Strife-Leonhart's Response:**

Leon.

**Cloud's Grade:**

F

_Teacher's Comments__: Cloud, this is hardly an answer, and, quite frankly, I expected better of you. Since you are retaking the course next semester anyways (for the eighth time I might add), I don't think failing you will be a cause for much heartache and to be perfectly honest, I just like failing people._

Cloud's Comments Along with Essay Resubmission: _There was no minimum requirement, you said that we could attempt to use first person but never set it as a rule, and you never said we couldn't pick a particular person. My business partner should be good enough, and besides, you didn't have to waste twenty minutes pouring over some generic crap about love and all its good qualities, did you? I only had your best interest at heart._

**Cloud's New Grade Upon Resubmission:**

A+


	9. Day OneHundredTwentyFour: New Year's, Yo

_**A/N: **Yeah.... Woohoo for getting this out sooner than I thought I would. Uh.... That's about it for now. Read please._

_**

* * *

**_

Chapter Seven

_**Day One-Hundred and Twenty-Four: Happy Fucking New Year's to You, Too**_

"He's just jealous because Professor Valentine likes me more." Cloud was perched on a stool in his mother's kitchen 'helping' her cook breakfast and gossiping (though he liked to think of it as 'discussing the affairs of others' because gossiping was something that girls did) about his family.

"I highly doubt he's jealous of you." Mrs. Strife answered neutrally. "In fact, I don't think he's the kind to get jealous about anything. He's not like you and Roxas."

"Speaking of Roxas, or of his boyfriend really… What's up with you and Axel?" Cloud leaned forward onto his elbows as his mother instinctively leant away from him, covering up her sudden nervousness by flipping a pancake even though it could have used another minute on the side it was already on.

"I don't have the slightest idea of what you're thinking of." Mrs. Strife hummed nervously and then made the mistake of turning back to look at her son, flinching at the look of pure _evil_ on his face. "Oh dear god. You aren't going to let this drop."

Cloud shook his head, propped his head up on his hands and waited silently. For someone who had a very impatient nature for the most part, he sure could find some patience when he wanted to know something badly enough.

Mrs. Strife sighed. She should have known that Cloud would notice her warmer than usual attitude towards Roxas' boyfriend. Her eldest was far too observant for his own good when he wanted to be. "Maybe I just thought it was about time to give the kid a chance?"

Cloud snorted in amusement. "You don't decide to give anyone a chance unless they've done something to earn it, especially not Axel. He stole your baby boy after all."

"He did nothing of the sort." Mrs. Strife responded haughtily, though they both knew what Cloud had said was more true that she ever liked to admit. Sure, Axel had stolen her baby against her will and turned him into an adult whether she had wanted him to or not, but he was also a juvenile delinquent that had spray painted and set her puppies on fire and had ended up in jail for it, and that was a bad thing… Right? "Okay… So he did, but that's not why I didn't like him."

"Yeah it is." Cloud pressed on. "Axel didn't do anything worse than I've ever done, or Leon, or even Sora. He just got caught and punished for it whereas we didn't. You can admit to not wanting the twins to leave the nest, Mom. I understand."

Mrs. Strife sighed heavily. "Fine. I don't want Sora and Roxas to grow up. I've admitted it. I'm a horrible mother. Will you stop badgering me about it now?"

"Nope." Cloud seemed oddly pleased at her reaction and Mrs. Strife had a moment where she toyed with the idea of transferring some hate over onto Cloud. "Mom… There is nothing wrong with wanting the twins to stay innocent and solely yours for as long as possible. Leon and I weren't exactly the cuddly, adoringly charming children they were, nor were we content to sit around and allow you to mother us the way they have."

Mrs. Strife laughed softly. "No, you weren't exactly models for innocence back then. Actually, if there ever was a time when you were innocent, I can't remember it. If one of you wasn't off making up some scheme or another, then the other was reading books on how to construct nuclear weapons."

"You're deflecting." Cloud pointed out as he lifted a mug of coffee to his lips in order to take a small sip. "But I'll allow it since you never talk about Leon and my childhood often."

"I don't know whether to be grateful or angry."

"Be grateful."

Mrs. Strife shook her head in amusement, choosing to take her son's words at face value and continue on her trip down memory lane. "You know, I thought you and Leon were going to be bitter enemies, not the best of friends."

"I'd say we're a little more than the best of friends now, wouldn't you?" Cloud teased playfully.

"I'd say so, yes, unless you have the strangest definition of 'friend' that I've ever heard of." Mrs. Strife offered up a light-hearted chuckle and went back to her pancake making. "But really. You both were very aggressive and assertive children. Edea and I were worried when we agreed to combine the orphanage's boys with the boys from your school into one troop, and for a moment there it looked like we were right to worry, especially when Leon tripped you and you attempted to break his nose in retaliation."

"He was just trying to get my attention because he didn't know how to just _say_ he admired my stunning good looks." Cloud settled deeper in to his stool, pleased that his mother was relaxing into the suddenly comfortable atmosphere of the kitchen. "And before you say anything, I did _so_ have stunning good looks when I was five and nothing you say or do is going to convince me otherwise."

"Okay, okay." Mrs. Strife held up her hands in mock defense. "Anyways, we weren't about to have another meeting again. Not after it had taken three adults and ten children to stop the both of you from putting yourselves in full-body casts, but you surprised us, for the first but certainly not the last time."

"Yeah…" Cloud smiled softly at the hazy memory of what had happened next. "We looked at each other and apologized. He gave me his toy car and I gave him one of my action figures and we threw glue at the other children during the crafts portion of the meeting."

"And you fought at least once a month from that point out, only stopping when you seemed to decide that torturing the other children would be more fun than punching and kicking each other." Mrs. Strife slid the last of the pancakes from off of the frying pan and onto a plate. "To be honest, we still thought you two were going to kill each other someday."

"We still might. If it does happen at least I'll know that I was the one to take him out." Cloud pointed out. "That and I'll know that he deserved it."

"What did I deserve?" Leon grumbled sleepily as he stumbled into the kitchen, awake before he would have liked to be because the intoxicating smell emanating from the kitchen made it seem like a much better place to be than alone in bed. "Well, I think I deserve one of those amazing looking pancakes for sure, though."

"Of course you do, sweetheart." Mrs. Strife cooed and hurried to set up plates on the counter as Leon drug himself up onto the stool next to Cloud's. "Cloud and I were merely discussing your childhood and how we all thought you were going to be enemies as opposed to whatever it is you are now."

"I think toleration is the key to what we are now." Cloud stated as he set about stealing the syrup and pouring more than he generally would have liked only to draw an angry yelp from out of Leon as the brunette began to worry that there would be none left for him.

"Toleration and the fact that you don't currently have a fat ass, which is something you _will_ have if you ingest that entire bottle of syrup. Gimme." And with that, Leon grabbed the bottle from out of Cloud's hands and went about making his own unhealthy mountain.

"Bully!" Cloud shouted and went to grab the bottle back but a warning glare from his mother stopped him and he sulked into his breakfast in retaliation.

"And these are the times when I wonder if you actually haven't grown at all and that if I blink hard enough I'll see that you're actually still five and two seconds away from gluing your brothers into their cribs before running away to hide at the orphanage." Mrs. Strife sighed as her comments only made the two men send malicious grins in each other's directions before returning to seeing who could shovel down the most food the fastest. "I swear I don't know what to do with you anymore."

"Love us unconditionally?" Cloud suggested around a mouthful of food.

"Speak with your mouth full again, and I'm kicking you out never to hear from you again." Mrs. Strife warned. Cloud flinched and swallowed deeply.

"Hey, Mom?" This time it was Leon speaking, though he'd had the foresight to completely chew and swallow his food before opening his mouth. As such, Mrs. Strife inclined her head in his direction to signal that he could continue. "We had a few questions for you and since Roxas is over at Axel's house and Sora was apparently kidnapped by Kairi half an hour ago." Here he looked at Cloud who nodded. "I guess this is as good a time as any to ask them."

"If the question has something to do with whether or not I think you have some strange psychic connection that puts the twins to shame, then the answer is yes." Mrs. Strife sent a confused look in the direction of her blonde son, who was still busy finishing off his pancakes so as to have time to steal whatever was left of Leon's. "How did you know where Sora was when you weren't awake half an hour ago and Cloud hasn't been able to speak with you alone since?"

Leon shrugged. "Cloud left me a note. Now, can we ask our questions or not?"

Mrs. Strife shrugged. "I don't see why not, though they must be particularly bothersome if you waited until Sora and Roxas were out of the house to ask them."

Now it was Cloud's turn to shrug. "I wouldn't call them bothersome, just private. Sora and Roxas, while being two of the best little twin brothers a guy can have, don't really need to know anything and everything about our private lives. And before you ask, this has nothing to do with them so don't start making up guilt trip speeches in your head because it's not like that this time."

Mrs. Strife was about to comment on that and undoubtedly put off the asking of the supposedly important questions for awhile longer, something Cloud seemed to be aiming for, when she was interrupted by Leon just spitting out the question quickly with all the tact of ripping off a band-aid so as to get the most painful part out of the way as quickly as possible.

"Why do you think we've never been out on a date?"

Mrs. Strife was apparently caught off guard by this question, and her reaction was within feasible ranges so both men waited patiently, Cloud using the moment to steal the remainder of Leon's breakfast out from under his nose since his stomach was never one to wait around for his brain to give into its demands. It took her a minute to gather together her thoughts and even longer to put them into some form of words as opposed to feelings, but she eventually took a deep breath and finally answered.

"I think that neither of you are really the kind of men that enjoy going out with a partner simply so that you can be seen and fall into a specific category the way most couples enjoy doing." Here she paused for a second to think something else through before continuing. "Or maybe it's because you're more the type to not care for the outside world, instead being perfectly content to stay indoors where you feel more comfortable and protected."

Cloud snorted in disbelief. "That can't be it. How would I know if I would like going out in public with a boyfriend if I've never had the thought to do it before?"

"Um… Well, damn it boys, what do you want me to say? You're obviously looking for a specific answer here so I don't see the purpose of bothering with asking such a question in the first place if you don't want my honest opinion." Mrs. Strife clenched and unclenched her fist and breathed out heavily through her nose in an effort to calm herself.

"Ignore, Cloud, Mom." Leon stated calmly. "He doesn't know what he wants and you know it. I understood what you were saying. Go on, please?"

"Well, since I'm assuming you're talking about yourselves, and you've taken into account that Leon took Rinoa out quite a bit while they were official, I'm going to have to say that Cloud's never really shown interest in wanting to go anywhere as an official couple, and the places you do tend to go together are places that your friends frequent since you don't tend to go anywhere on your own because you're hermits like that. So once you do get where you're going, any thoughts either of you might have had about indulging in a romantic evening alone are blown away by the presence of friends that are much more interesting to you than doing something like hanging out alone since you see a lot of each other on a daily basis as it is. Living with each other for about twelve years will do that to a couple."

Leon rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he digested this newest information. Cloud just digested his breakfast because he wasn't quite in the mood to get into an argument with his mother about his desire to never leave his apartment unless absolutely necessary again. That and Leon seemed to be the one most disturbed by this newest turn of events in their relationship. Cloud had been perfectly happy the way things were before the stupid bet had put all these damn _ideas_ into both of their heads.

"Is it wrong of me to want to take Cloud somewhere nice only because I suddenly realized how much of the normal romance we were missing as a consequence of a stupid bet?" Leon asked, not quite sure he wanted to hear the answer any more, but committed to see the conversation out to its end because he knew that leaving it off in the middle would only cause his mother to worry and he never wanted that.

"_I_ don't think so." Cloud piped up from where he was now sulking into his coffee, not happy with being ignored.

He was, of course, still ignored.

"In a way, I would say so…" Mrs. Strife began, quickly hurrying into the second half of her explanation at the look of pure panic on Leon's face. He really hadn't meant to be a bad boyfriend after all, but with Cloud being as obstinate as he was, that was kind of a hard thing to avoid for anyone in _any_ kind of a relationship with the blonde. "But also, I don't think that applies to this situation really. I mean, you two were rivals before you were friends, and friends before you were lovers, and then you went backwards from there into boyfriend category and now I don't even know what you are. Life partners is really the only term that comes to mind. You're… Well, you're complicated."

"I _liked_ our relationship the way it was." Leon and Mrs. Strife turned to look at and acknowledge Cloud for the first time since the conversation began, somehow sensing that he actually had something of substance to contribute this time around. "I never wanted to go out on a date, with you or with anyone, and I never wanted to hold your hand or kiss in public because I never really thought about needing to do it to prove that I loved you. Now this whole fucking bet thing has got you thinking about what you _think_ you should be doing instead of what had been working for us for years, and I _hate_ it."

He took a deep breath and hurried onwards. "I hate this stupid insecurity I feel every time we leave the dorm now. I hate having to think about what I'm saying to you or if I've angled my body a little bit too far in your direction to be taken as brotherly affection. I hate thinking about how I want nothing more than to take you away to a private place in order to do very private things with you only to find that I suddenly just don't care if anyone else is watching because, damn it, I don't get to do such things on a regular basis any longer and it's driving me crazy!"

"And I especially hate the way you're now beating yourself up over every little thing because you've somehow suddenly come to see that you aren't perfect. Well, fine! _Don't_ be perfect. I don't _want_ you to be perfect. I want you to be _you_, the way you used to be, not giving a flying fuck what everyone else thought or if we were normal or not. I want our old fucking relationship back and I want it back _now_."

"_FUCK_!"

Both Leon and Mrs. Strife stared at the red-faced and panting blonde, neither one quite sure as to what to say in response to such an outburst. Though Leon was feeling even more guilty than before if that was at all possible since he hadn't stopped to think about what Cloud might have been feeling during all the times that Leon was sitting there worrying about something that was apparently nothing. He would have chalked it up to just another reason as to how he was a bad boyfriend, but figured that doing so would probably have defeated the purpose of Cloud's sudden explosion.

"Damn it, Leon, don't you see? You never _were_ a bad boyfriend." Cloud went on after he had managed to catch his breath once more. It was almost uncanny how the blonde had picked up on Leon's train of thought almost immediately. "To someone else, yeah, maybe you were, but to me you were everything I was looking for and I never once thought any differently."

"Besides, who's to say what is normal for us? But if you want to go out and fool around in public or go make-out in a movie theater, then fine, we can do that. Whatever makes _you_ happy makes _me_ happy." Cloud crossed his arms over his chest at the end of that statement and waited with an almost defensive look on his face as his mother and boyfriend stared at him as though he had finally lost his mind for good.

"Wow." Leon let out the breath of air he hadn't known he's been holding and shifted on his stool to get a better look at Cloud's face. "Why didn't you say any of this before?"

Cloud shrugged, slipping back into a more neutral position as opposed to his recent 'ready to pounce' mode. "You never asked, and, quite frankly, I assumed you were going to let this whole thing drop before it reached this point."

"Wow…" Apparently Mrs. Strife had managed to find her voice once more. "I would be so much more worried about you if I didn't know that doing so would only push you into becoming that perfect thing that Cloud apparently dislikes so very much."

"Nice to see you can still take the time out of your busy day to care about us." Cloud murmured, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he apparently wasn't as good at containing his emotions as he thought he was. Which, considering this was the first outburst he'd given into since he was eight and Leon had stolen his bike, wasn't really true. "So… Are we done heart-to-heart chatting for now? I swear I've had more _conversations_ in these last two months than I have in the last two years."

"Your ability to gloss over anything remotely hinting at emotions never ceases to amaze me." Mrs. Strife responded drily. "I know I raised you differently. What went wrong? Was I really such a bad mother to you?"

"You were an amazing mother." Cloud said smugly. "Leon was just a very, very bad influence. I mean, I don't know if he was quite on par with Axel, it is pretty hard to reach Leon levels of insanely bad ideas… I'm pretty sure there were things he did that even _Axel_ would have to think twice about, but hey, it worked out in the end, right?"

"Low blow, Cloud, low blow." Now it was Leon's turn to cross his arms over his chest in disdain for the situation.

Cloud shrugged, clearly unconcerned at his boyfriend's bad mood. "Stop treating the kid like public enemy number one just because he got caught at something you would have hopefully gotten away with and I'll stop trapping you like that."

"Why are you suddenly defending him?" Leon asked grumpily. Discussing Axel was not high on his list of things to do after being yelled at for trying to be a better boyfriend. In fact, discussing Axel with anyone who would be on the red-head's side generally wasn't on his list at all. "I know you don't _hate_ him, but you don't _like_ him either."

"I also love my little brother very much and Axel makes him happy." Cloud seemed to ponder something privately for a moment. "I guess I would be a very bad brother if I didn't care about how my mother and lover seem to enjoy making him unhappy and stressed out."

"Ouch. What is it with you and making everyone feel guilty today?" Mrs. Strife asked, clearly wounded by her son's sudden disregard for the fact that she was actually now _trying_ to like Axel.

"I'm not trying to make _you_ guilty, Mom." Cloud answered. "You're trying. If three-fourths of this family is going to at least make an attempt at accepting Roxas' decisions in life, then Leon is going to have to be hopping on the bandwagon sooner or later and I'm betting that Roxas is hoping for the 'sooner' option."

"I don't hop on any bandwagons just because you want me to." Leon sounded irritated, but the way he was suddenly refusing to look Cloud or his mother in the eye more than proved that Cloud had hit a nerve with that one.

"I don't want you to do anything." Cloud answered mildly as he stood up and walked his dirty dishes to the sink. "In fact, there is very little I want from you that isn't somehow tied in with sex or munny, but I shouldn't have to want you to be nice to our brother's boyfriend. You should want to do that because Roxas needs you to accept what he's choosing to do with his life, not because I ordered you to do it."

"Why is it that you can't be this mature in public, you know where all my friends can see and congratulate me on raising such a nice, young man." Mrs. Strife threw her hands up in the air in an overdramatic gesture. "But no… You save all your moments of stunning insight for those times when there's no one around but Leon and myself, and damn it, no one will believe me when I say that you were the most logical one out of all of us from time to time."

"That sounds like a personal problem." Cloud quipped as he made his way back to where Leon was now staring forlornly at his empty plate. Well, he was staring blankly at his empty plate with his facial expression the same apathetic scowl that it was usually set in, but Cloud knew him enough to see the sad soul on the inside. "And Leon, I don't want to be mean or anything, but you can be terribly short-sighted when it comes to the people you care about. We really don't ask for much I think, but you seem dead set on giving us all the things we _aren't_ asking for that you never really get around to giving us the things we really want."

Leon's shoulders slumped as he mentally gave in. "Fine, fine. I'm not going to apologize, and I'm not going to be nice to Axel so long as remains an idiot, but I will talk to Roxas and I will let him know that I don't totally hate the way he's living his life. What I _do_ fucking hate is when you're the responsible one."

"What can I say? I'm a genius." Cloud grinned triumphantly as he took up his stool once more much in the manner of a new king sitting on his throne for the very first time. "You can start heaping your adorations at my feet whenever you please."

"You're not a genius." Leon shot back spitefully. "You just get lucky that all that Doctor Phil you watch rubs off on you from time to time."

"Says the person who got a B in a class he's already taken seven times." Cloud smirked, enjoying his lover's squirming for all it was worth since it wasn't often that Leon was put on the ropes in such a way. Enjoying every precious second before the brunette gained even footing again was something that needed to be done while it lasted because Leon tended to recover from even intense mental anguish fairly quickly.

"You wrote one word, Cloud, one word." Leon scoffed in disbelief. "No, not even a word. You wrote a name. My name. You wrote my name and got an A+. How is that even remotely fair?"

"Professor Valentine just must like me more or something." Cloud sighed wistfully. "And to think, here I was thinking that you were his favorite student for all these years when it really was me all along. I think you should be thanking me."

"What? Why the hell would I do something like that?" Leon asked incredulously, not quite sure how Cloud's laziness constituted Leon's thanks. "Just because you got lucky once and Professor Valentine suffered a streak of laziness that would rival yours doesn't mean that I owe you anything other than scorn and outrage for stealing my name in order to get a better grade than me."

"Technically, it's not your name, _Squall_." Cloud looked smugly at where Leon was silently fuming, his attention successfully drawn away from the sensitive subjects that had made him so upset only a few moments ago.

"Technically, I can still kick your ass, _Cloud_."

"Children, children." Mrs. Strife cut in quickly before any blood could be spilt. "Leon, there's no need to give him what he wants when he's clearly baiting you. Cloud, stop baiting your brother before I kick the both of you out of my kitchen."

"Ew…" Cloud wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Did you really have to refer to him as my brother? That's just wrong on so many different levels."

Mrs. Strife offered up an apologetic, lopsided smile. "Sorry. Force of habit. The statement, however, still stands. There will be no ass-kicking in my kitchen now or ever, and you two would be wise to remember that."

"Yes, ma'am." Cloud and Leon chorused guiltily and then shoved against each other roughly with their shoulders in retaliation for saying the same thing at the same time.

"Five year olds… I've raised a pair of self-sufficient five years olds…"

"Hey!"

* * *

"I still don't understand why I needed to be dragged out of the house when I was perfectly content sleeping the day away in preparation for not sleeping at all tonight." Sora complained as he stretched out on Kairi's couch, rifling through some girly magazine that was entirely too pink for anyone in his opinion. "I'll bet Leon isn't even awake yet."

"And I'd bet you'd win that bet." Kairi muttered from where she was half buried in an end table across the room. "If anyone sees so much as the tiniest glimpse of him before noon, I wouldn't be surprised."

"What are you even looking for?" Sora asked curiously, finding her fervent searching through what must have been centuries of junk more entertaining than whatever the latest teeny-bopper pop star had been up to last weekend.

Kairi poked her head out and rested her chin on the top of the end table. "I'm currently searching for Naminé's blue skirt. She promised me last week I could borrow it for tonight and it's suddenly made a mysterious disappearing act. As soon as I find that, however, I'm going to be taking you and meeting up with Aerith and some others in order to be better prepared for tonight. And that is why I dragged you out of bed on New Year's Eve when you could be sleeping. Any more annoying and unnecessary questions?"

"Not really…" Sora responded and chunked the magazine at the grinning red-head's face. "But I would like to say that I don't see why I'm needed for your meeting with Aerith. I'm on the other side of the fence when it comes to the bet, remember? If anything, I should want to make sure that whatever you're planning _isn't_ going to happen."

Kairi shrugged and went back to her digging. "I highly doubt you are going to sabotage us. You love your brothers too much, despite what you might like others to think. Your purpose is pretty much to be there in case you let something slip that we may need to know. Something that Aerith might not be privy to since she doesn't exactly live with them the way you and Roxas used to."

"Isn't it generally a bad idea to tell your enemy your grand plan before it's actually taken place?" Sora asked idly, not really caring about what Kairi and her friends were up to. He didn't feel the need to take an active role in all the betting insanity that had cropped up as a result of his brothers' lack of love lives. "Haven't you ever seen a James Bond movie… Or an Austin Powers one?"

Kairi grunted which could have meant she agreed or that she thought he was an idiot, he couldn't really tell which, but she didn't pop back up again.

"Although I highly doubt this is a matter of national security, so maybe the rules are different." He pondered aloud, trying to latch onto anything that would keep him entertained while Kairi ransacked her home in search of Naminé's missing skirt. "You know, they really are nothing more than like best friends, or brothers would probably be the better way to put it."

"You keep thinking that, then and I'll just wave my munny in your face when you've found out that you've lost and I'll be happy." Kairi sighed and rocked back onto her heels. "If I were a skirt that Naminé really didn't want me to wear after all… Where would I have disappeared to?"

"Have you tried the secret drawer in her nightstand?" Sora suggested and couldn't help but laugh as Kairi shot to her feet and took off down the hallway to her sister's room. Not even a minute later she returned to the room grinning triumphantly and clutching something made out of a shimmery sky blue fabric in her left hand.

"Why didn't I think of that?" She asked as she plopped down onto the sofa for a well-deserved rest before they had to leave.

Sora shrugged and tossed some of his bangs from out of his eyes. "Roxas has got much of the same set-up at home. He likes to think I don't know about it but since he never kept anything worth hiding in it, I figured he knew I knew. Comes with sharing a room."

"Still looking for the infamous red notebook?" Kairi asked innocently.

"He has one, I know it! I swear I saw him writing in it once. I'm assuming it was a love note to the devil." Sora crossed his arms at his waist and pouted into the sofa cushions. "He would do that, you know."

"I know." Kairi fell over sideways and curled up against Sora's side. He shifted a bit to give her more room so she wasn't quite as squished against the back of the sofa, but otherwise didn't move. "Would it really be so bad if your brothers turned out to like each other like that?"

Sora thought the question over for a minute, resting his head gently against the arm rest as Kairi squirmed a bit to allow his movement. "I guess it wouldn't be a _bad_ thing per se. It would be beyond weird and I think that it would come as a big shock, but I guess I wouldn't have much of a problem with it. Roxas is gay after all and we didn't disown him."

They then settled into a semi-comfortable silence as each one considered Sora's words carefully.

"I went out on a date with Zell last week." Kairi said after about five minutes into the silence. "He's a nice kid. I think I'm really starting to like him. He's a lot on the hyper side, but so is Selphie and I've never had a problem keeping up with her before. And, subtracting the tattoo on his face, he's actually fairly attractive."

"Kai… You don't have to justify who you date to me, not anymore." Sora sighed and looked down at his friend. "I never was your boyfriend after all, just your friend. You don't need my approval to have an intimate relationship, you never did."

"You didn't want to be my boyfriend." Kairi began picking at a loose strand at the hem of Sora's shirt. "Looking back, I guess I didn't really want for you to be my boyfriend either, but I didn't want you to spend the rest of your life alone just because you turned me down. Don't even try to deny it. When you realized you didn't like me, the only logical choice you could think of, as anything more than a really, really good friend, you opened up a whole new can of worms that scared you. You're still scared."

"He loves you, you know. He only ever wanted you to be happy, and you're not. It worries all of us, but him most of all."

"Kairi, I can't." Sora shook his head as though trying to dislodge a disturbing image. "Riku… He's great. He's amazing and sexy and confident and a whole hell of a lot of other things that I'm not, but he's my friend. Sure he thinks he loves me, but it's not real, at least not to him. You know how he is. Life's just a game and he's already obtained the High Level Fuck You Up where nothing can touch him and if something _does_ goes wrong, there's always that little reset button that lets him do the level over, but I'm not going to put myself through that. I don't have a reset button and I don't think I could stand losing him as friend more than anything else."

"It wouldn't be like that." Kairi said softly so that Sora had to strain to hear her. "You're pretty much the only thing that's _not_ a game to him. He'd rather cut off his foot than do something to hurt you, even if it puts him through hell because of it."

"But I'm not going to change your mind today or any day. That's something you're going to have to do on your own." She said, her tone suddenly becoming much more upbeat as she wiggled away from Sora's light grasp and got to her feet. "Come on, slowpoke, we're gonna be late."

"If you'll recall, I was ready." Sora pointed out as he rose slowly to his feet and stretched. "You were the one that wanted to sit here talking about something that doesn't even matter because it's never going to happen."

"Wow…" Kairi tugged him down the hallway to the front door where their shoes and coats were waiting. "I think you just channeled Leon for a second there. You have been spending waaaaay too much time with your brother if you're letting your impatience show through like that."

"Hazard of having to be by him at every second on the off chance that Seifer or Sephiroth decide they want to show up and make a mess of things." Sora shrugged into his coat and toed on his shoes as Kairi unlocked and opened the door. "They've been doing that a lot lately. It's annoying and I think Leon's going to end up in jail or a mental ward if this whole debacle doesn't end soon."

"All that rage can't be good for him. He should go on a vacation." Both young adults exited the red-head's home and waited for Kairi to lock the door behind her before ambling away down the pathway that led to where her car had been parked on the street. "He should go to Aerith and Zack's cabin where I'm sure the intense cold will force Cloud indoors, leaving with him no choice but to follow, where he will be then forced to use body heat in order to not die of frostbite, which will of course lead to his discovery that Cloud is the hottest thing on the face of this planet and that he'd really like to do something a lot less innocent than just cuddling. I'm sure you get the picture from here because it'll end in my getting paid and you fulfilling whatever it is that Riku has in store for you for losing the bet."

"Forty degrees Fahrenheit is intense cold for Cloud and it's been colder than that for about a month." Sora snarked as he climbed into his friend's car. "I highly doubt going to a cabin is going to change the way they look at their relationship, and besides, Cloud isn't going to change his mind. I don't know what everyone keeps going on about, but when Cloud puts his foot down, he puts his foot down. Nothing short of a nuclear blast is going to get him out of this town when he's already said he doesn't want to go."

Kairi shrugged in indifference. "Doesn't matter. It'll only give us more time to work on them without that bothersome thing known as 'distance' to get in the way. It's only a matter of time now."

"You mean only a matter of time until they find out and we're all going to be forced into hiding because they're going to want to make a world encompassing jump rope with our intestines." Sora muttered as he dropped down into the passenger seat. "You do know that this will be the cause of our untimely murders, correct?"

"I've come to terms with that, yes, and I plan on hiding behind your mother in hopes that she loves them enough to want them not to go to jail for murdering an entire campus full of people." Kairi sighed and stared out the windshield. "Sora, are you really that upset about this whole thing?"

"Nah, Im just bored and imagining the mass burning of the entire student body is something I tend to imagine when I'm bored." The friends turned and grinned at each other and Kairi started the car.

"You're lucky I still love you."

"You have no idea."

* * *

"So Axel dragged you along, too?" Sora whispered as he and his twin settled into a plush loveseat in Aerith's living room.

Roxas nodded, looking bored already. "Something about wanting our opinion on our brothers. Have they never seen a James Bond movie before?"

"Funny, I asked Kairi the same question not even ten minutes ago." Sora answered as he leant back into the sofa and settled in for the long haul. "They seem to think that we're harmless."

"Well, we are." Roxas pointed out as he copied his brother's movements. "We don't care either way how this ends up, and only placed bets pretty much because Riku and Axel made us. We're like Switzerland."

"We have secure banks and nude women?" Sora winced from his brother's sudden punch to his shoulder but snickered none the less. "Yeah, yeah. We're neutral and thus not a threat. Doesn't mean we apparently can't be tools to meet an end."

"Boy, boys, there will be no complaining or sarcastic comments from the peanut gallery today." Naminé's crystalline voice cut through their conversation as she entered the room with Tifa and Rikku in tow, the three girls finding places on the floor to sit as those already present shifted around to find room. "Tifa? Ground rules?"

"Right." The long-haired brunette stood up and waited for all present to calm down enough for her to be heard. "First off, Yuna called and said that she had to do something with Tidus and his family today so she can't make it. Rikku, would you be so kind as to pass on anything she may need to know?"

Rikku nodded happily and went back to bouncing happily from where she was sitting on Axel's foot.

"Rule Number One: No talking when someone else is speaking… _Axel_." Axel shrugged and sent a lecherous look in Roxas' general direction. "Or doing any of that or we're going to be forced to make you leave."

"Can't _I_ just leave?" Roxas asked hopefully.

"No." Roxas sighed but settled back down into a thumb war with his twin. Tifa continued on. "Rule Number Two: Anything we say here never leaves this room, except in the case of Rikku telling Yuna."

Riku raised his hand. "Which Riku are we talking about here?"

"Blonde, bubbly Rikku." Said Rikku giggled at the description but quickly fell silent as Tifa sent a glare at her. "Continuing on… Rule Number Three: Aerith is the final say on what will and won't work unless it's obvious she's trying to hold us back for whatever reason. Everyone agree to follow these rules?"

There was a loud chorus of 'yeses', with an 'if we don't, can we leave?' coming from the corner Sora and Roxas had claimed as their own. A pillow was thrown at them by Selphie and they chose to shut up for the time being.

"Are they going to Axel's party tonight?" Tifa asked, mainly directing the question at Sora and Roxas since they would be the ones to be privy to sudden changes of plans where Cloud and Leon were concerned since they had all returned home for the Winter Break as opposed to their apartments or friend's houses.

However, Aerith was the one to answer. "Yeah. Zack and I are going, too, at Leon's request as extra eyes to make sure the twins don't do something that would send their mother into an early grave… Er, sorry Sora and Roxas… We didn't exactly get much of a choice. An angry Leon is a very persuasive thing. But anyways, if Zack's going, he's sure as hell going to make sure at least Cloud is there to keep him entertained."

"Which means that Leon is going to be there if nothing more than to make sure Cloud doesn't imagine he has wings or something in a half-drunken state." Rikku chirped from where she was now giggling over nothing with Selphie. "Which means that Cloud is going to attach himself to Leon like a mollusk. It's going to be freakin _amazing_."

"Hell to the yeah it is!" Selphie pumped her fist in the air in enthusiasm and both girls gave each other high fives. "Yuffie's bringing her camera and everything. We'll have proof!"

"Nothing's going to happen." Roxas muttered quietly as he went best two out of three in his thumb war with his twin. "Tell them, Sora. Nothing's going to happen."

"I've already told them. On several occasions in the past few months to be exact." Sora muttered as he moved his thumb quickly and initiated the three out of five rule and took their thumb war into extra innings. "They didn't listen to me. It's your turn."

Roxas shrugged and turned his attention back to the war, ignoring the haughty looks of those gathered around them. "Meh, they'll get in on their own sooner or later."

"Ignoring the doom and gloom brothers in the corner…" Tifa went on. "It has come to my attention that somehow Sephiroth ended up being invited to this party…"'

"Invited himself, you mean." Riku filled in from where he had been dozing on the arm of a couch. "Axel was dumb enough to mail me an invitation even though he _knows_ Seph goes through my mail on almost a daily basis when he's home."

"I said sorry!" Axel whined. "And besides, it was more Roxas' fault than mine. He was the one who was addressing the envelopes. I told him not to send one to you!"

"Then you shouldn't have put his name on the list you gave me. How was I supposed to know there were people on there you wanted to hand deliver your shit to?" Roxas scoffed as Sora won their current thumb war and they went into a new one. "Next time do your own dirty work and we won't have such a problem. Lazy ass."

"The laziness of Axel's ass is not what is up for debate at this moment, nor do I think anything revolving around Axel's ass will ever be on the table for discussion." Tifa tried to shift the meeting back to its original purpose, immediately seeing the malicious light in Axel's emerald eyes that said he was about to say something incredibly stupid if she didn't step in to get them back on track. "Back to the matter at hand, if Sephiroth is coming, then Reno is sure to make an appearance and he's a wild card. He generally respects Cloud's wishes, but he's seemingly put himself firmly on Sephiroth's side for this particular battle and that makes him dangerous."

"Zack can contain Reno for a time." Aerith said gently. "But Reno's crafty and plays by his own rules, rules that he bends and changes to suit his needs at the moment. I don't think Zack is going to be able to stop him if he is dead set on causing a scene."

Kairi sighed heavily. "Reno has always been the wild child in our family. He never thinks of anyone but himself and those people that have done enough for him that he has come to trust them or feels as though he owes them a debt. I don't know whether he owes Sephiroth for something or if he really does care about that pompous ass… Sorry Riku."

"No offense taken. My brother _is_ an ass." Riku waved off the criticism of his brother easily.

"The only thing I can think of is to somehow get Tseng or Rude on our side." Naminé added thoughtfully. "Or both would probably be best. If we could convince Tseng that holding Reno back is the right thing to do, then we're pretty much guaranteed Rude's help… Though Rude would be much easier to convince. It's pretty much a catch twenty-two. You can't really get one without the other, and you definitely can't control Reno without one of them. He obeys Sephiroth, but Tseng is who he picks over everyone when it comes to following orders, and Rude is just an extension of Tseng's power over our cousin. Don't know why, but it can come in handy."

"Yeah, except none of us are friends or even passing acquaintances with either of them." Selphie was quick to point out, her attention apparently having been refocused on the conversation when she had heard her cousin being discussed. "It's going to be practically impossible for us to get them on our side."

"All you need to do convince Rufus to tell Tseng to do whatever we want him to do." Axel said, making it the first intelligent thing he uttered since arriving. "And all we have to do to guarantee that is get my Aunt Scarlet to convince him… And that is a piece of cake. She'll do it purely for the thought of the pure chaos that she'll be inadvertently causing."

"But Aunt Scarlet is away somewhere on business." Kairi pointed out. "No one really knows where she went only that she wasn't going to be back for some time."

"She's back." Selphie's feminine voice chirped and a worried smile flitted across her face. "I don't know what good she's going to be for our cause, but she is back and staying with Yuna's family as of today…"

There was a deep silence as all present (excepting Sora and Roxas who were still attempting to crush each other's thumbs into oblivion) considered drawing yet another outsider into the situation at hand. On one hand, there really wasn't much someone else could do to ruin things aside from telling Cloud and Leon what was going on, and Kairi, Naminé, Axel, Reno, Selphie, Rikku, Yuna, and Paine's aunt didn't really seem like the kind of person that would care enough to do something like that. Of course, you never did know, and drawing a stranger with no knowledge of the stakes wasn't something any of them wanted to do this late in the game.

On the other hand, it was quickly looking to be their only option with Axel's party rapidly approaching and no other solution for tempering Reno's presence presenting itself. Having an intoxicated and erratic Reno running around with his own agenda did nothing to ease the tensions that had suddenly cropped up at the knowledge of Sephiroth's attendance. And that wasn't even counting the veritable shit storm that would form if anyone from Rinoa's camp was stupid enough to show up in person… Which, considering the lack of fore planning most of the students who had gathered on her side had shown so far, had a higher probability of occurring than it really should have.

"Call her up as soon as we're done here." Tifa sighed heavily. "I don't think it's going to work so soon, or if it does, it won't work as well as we're hoping for, but it's all we've got at the moment."

There was another uneasy silence at the brunette's words, a silence that was broken suddenly by Sora and Roxas' simultaneous sighs.

"You guys are treating this like it's a war and you're about to go to battle for better or for worse." Sora removed his thumb from his twin's crushing grasp and turned so that he was fully facing the gathering of young men and women. "This isn't some game or some contest of wills. These are my _brothers_ you are discussing. This is their _happiness_ at stake, not just a bunch of munny or your own stupid pride."

"Yeah." Roxas jumped in to finish out what his twin had started. "Why can't everyone just sit back let whatever is supposed to happen, happen? It's not the world is going to collapse in on itself if you don't do something to get them together. They've been friends forever and a few more months or years isn't going to change the fabric of the universe, so stop treating this whole deal as though it is a national disaster of epic proportions waiting to happen."

"As much as I would love to do that…" Aerith cut in before the silence could take hold and the twin's words could fully sink in. "I can't turn my back to what is happening on the other side of the spectrum either. I may not care how it turns out in the end so long as Leon and Cloud are happy and content, but I do know that if there isn't someone on the other side to keep the balance equal then Rinoa and Seifer are going to run roughshod all over the place and _nothing_ good can come of that. Throw Sephiroth into the equation and there's an explosion waiting to go off at a moment's notice, with or without our approval."

"So yeah, I know this is probably wrong, and I really think that we'd all be better off leaving them alone, more for our own healths than anything else, but I'm not going to stop helping." Here she offered up a weak smile as though she were trying to reassure herself but was still coming up a few cents short of a full munny. "I know you boys are theoretically on the other side of the fence where this issue is concerned, but anything you can do to help us is in actuality, a move to protect your brothers."

"They don't want us to protect them." Sora sounded strained and slightly frustrated, as though he were trying to see a picture through a lens that was almost transparent, but was still holding onto the vestiges of something opaque simply for the fact that it reveled in stopping him from seeing what he needed to make the puzzle whole. "At least, I don't think they do. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the mere thought of someone out there wanting to protect them from something else is a laughable notion at best. I… Don't know what to do actually…"

The brunette turned his crystal blue eyes imploringly onto his twin and Roxas shrugged. "I don't know what to do either. Aerith makes a good case, and I might not know much about Sephiroth or Reno, but I do know that they are not people who are going to have either of my brothers' best interests at heart, and they are not going to stop just because Cloud and Leon tell them to. Sora… I think we should at least give them the information they need. It can't hurt."

"But we don't _know_ anything." Sora ground out through clenched teeth. "Just because we lived with them doesn't mean they told us anything."

"Sora…" Riku voice cut through the thick silence. "I think you know more about your brothers than you think… And I know you want to help them. Just knowing we have your support is fine for now; we don't need you stressing yourself out over nothing."

"But it's not nothing!" Selphie cried out, her voice strained and heavy with some unknown emotion. "There is something more to this that we just don't know, some level we're missing and it's going to come back and hit us when we're least likely to be able to do anything about it!" Here she turned her piercing gaze on Riku. "All I do know is that it has something to do with _your_ brother and something that he may or may not have done to Cloud almost four years ago."

There was a sudden murmur of voices that quickly rose to a dull roar as those present turned to their neighbors to discuss exactly what Selphie had meant by her accusation, the tension in the room coiling around and turning into something almost palpable. It was looking as though the meeting was about to fall apart, torn by indecision and doubts and the things that they wanted to know, but had always been too afraid to ask.

"I think that I can help you as far as that is concerned."

Everyone jumped as the soft voice swept through the room, a musical tilt painting its inflection as a gentle chuckle bubbled through the air like a lost melody. All eyes turned to the previously empty doorway as Demyx glided his way into the room, the stern expression on his face out of place with the light amusement that was always reflected in the clear green-blue depths of his ever-expressive eyes. Those present shifted uncomfortably as Demyx walked calmly to the center of the room and looked at each one of them in turn, but no one said anything or tried to stop him or even ask him how he got there.

"Selphie was right, something did happen between Cloud and Sephiroth two years ago, though the only ones who seem to know the truth of the matter are the two involved." There was a hint of something bordering on frustration in Demyx's voice but he immediately covered it up, moving on quickly but without any outward haste, his voice rushing and soothing like a babbling brook on a lazy summer's day. "What would you say if I told you that I could find out exactly what it is that Sephiroth hides deep within himself? What would you give if I could find out what it was that he has hidden away from the outside world, not because he was ashamed, but because he failed?"

"What price are you willing to pay for your victory?"

* * *

"You should not have done that." Zexion seemed displeased as Demyx made his way gracefully through a thicket of trees in the park across from Aerith's home, but the musician sensed the truth. His boyfriend was worried about him. "Now you have placed yourself firmly in the midst of what is happening here and there is no way for you to withdraw."

Demyx shrugged, clearly unconcerned at Zexion's worry. "It was going to happened sooner or later. I'm not like you. I don't take kindly to hiding and manipulations."

Zexion twitched slightly, the small tendrils of a barely suppressed winced rippling through his body. "You did not have to join in this. I did not ask for you to become a part of something that would cause you to break away from what you are comfortable with."

"I wanted to." Demyx shrugged once more and leant gently against the smaller form beside him. "Besides, Larxene was the one who dragged me into that stupid place from the beginning. You didn't really have anything to do with it until Luxord called in his favor, and by that time I figured I might as well go all in. I don't like to play with my cards close to my chest."

"No, no you don't." Zexion took a deep breath and stared unseeingly straight in front of him. He should have been angry. He should have ordered Demyx to stand down and back away before he got hurt, but he knew better. The musician was tougher than he looked. "How are you planning on going about digging through an event that happened four years previous to this?"

"To be honest… I don't really know, but I'll think of something." Demyx seemed awfully calm for someone who had just promised a room full of people that he would do something when he didn't even have the slightest clue with how to begin.

Of course, that was nothing new at all and yet Demyx always seemed to pull through somehow. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was something else, something that normally cowardly man kept hidden deep inside, reserved for those times when he would need it most. Zexion didn't know or care. All he knew was that Demyx wouldn't be the same person without whatever it was that made him like this; that made him unique and that was what made Zexion fall in love with him more each and every day.

"I want to help you." Coming from anyone else, that would probably have been a half-hidden offer, but Demyx knew better.

"Don't bother." Demyx tilted his head up to accept some of the weak beams of light that filtered in through the trees onto his pale face. "I've spent a lot of my life relying on others to do what I needed to get done. It's about damn time I got my feet under me for good this time. As amazing as you truly are, you don't need someone like me dragging around at the bottom of one of your stupid _cloaks_, and I've accepted that."

"You do not need to make fun of my cloaks." Zexion answered tersely, trying to hold back all the emotions that were attempting to whirl to the surface, hoping against all hope that Demyx couldn't see exactly how much his words had affected the normally stoic man.

Demyx took a deep breath and shoved lightly against the schemer's shoulder. "Hey, this isn't something that's going to happen overnight. Let's go home and sleep. Tonight's going to be a bitch and a half if what we heard at Rinoa's place has even the smallest chance of happening."

"Agreed."

* * *

"No, I haven't seen either of them since I left the house this morning, and Leon was still asleep then." Sora had his arms crossed resolutely over his chest as he surveyed the crowd of people in front of him. "Cloud didn't say anything about a change of plans, if that's what you're trying to get me to tell you. For all I fucking know they ran the hell away from here and are never coming back."

The music was loud and the drinks were flowing freely and there were more than a few people who had already done and said things that were going to come back and haunt them in the not-too-distant future, but Cloud Strife and Leon Leonhart were nowhere to be found. In fact, no one had seen neither hide nor hair of them since Sora and Kairi had passed Cloud in the kitchen earlier that morning. It was almost as though they had vanished off the face of the earth.

"They're your brothers. The least you could do is send them a text or call them or something." Tifa seemed much more panicked than she really should have been, mainly because Sephiroth had turned up with Reno and Seifer in tow and she was desperately hoping someone from her side would run into the missing pair before they did. "They could have gotten into an accident or something and you're never going to know because you don't care enough to call and make sure they're alright!"

"Tifa, they are grown men. If they don't want to come to a party, then they don't have to come to a party." Roxas sighed and rubbed a hand over his forehead absentmindedly, more worried than he was actually letting on. "It doesn't mean that they got into an accident or are in some kind of mortal peril just because they don't want to come hang out with us."

"I'm not surprised they aren't here to be honest." Zack whispered to his wife as they watched the scene from the sidelines, trying their best not to say or do anything that would draw attention to them in case the third degree decided to shift its focus. "I wouldn't have shown up either if I were in their shoes."

"Yeah, but these idiots don't know that." Aerith whispered back. "Not coming to this party is probably the most mature thing they've done in forever, but no one's going to know about it because they're also being so stubborn it's bordering on _immature_. Why did I have to marry the cousin of a walking oxymoron?

"Because you love the cousin of the walking oxymoron more than you love your sanity?" Zack offered up hopefully as he tried desperately to focus on something that wasn't the rapidly growing crowd of concerned young men and women that were mobbing Sora and Roxas in the hopes that they would give up the whereabouts of their brothers.

"Yes, dear. You're not quite as bad as I thought you would be." Aerith gently patted a hand on her husband's arm. "You saw them today, didn't you?"

Zack grinned and rubbed at the nape of his neck nervously, a sure sign that he had. "Promise not to hit me for not telling you sooner?"

"I promise." Aerith smiled serenely in encouragement, knowing that Zack hadn't spoken up sooner for his own reasons. Reasons that probably had a lot to do with the crowd that had gathered in their house hours previous. "Spill."

"They were at the house when I went to visit Aunt Sylvia earlier today…" Zack paused and glanced around to make sure that no one was listening and dropped his voice even lower for safety, causing Aerith to have to lean in to hear him properly. "I, ah, kind of slipped in through the backdoor 'cause I wanted to be all surprising and stuff and I, uh, heard some things that I probably shouldn't have heard… I don't think this bet thing is a good idea anymore."

"I _never_ thought this bet thing was a good idea." Aerith squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment as though warding off some hovering storm. "Oh damn… There's nothing we can do about this anymore, is there? Fuck."

"Aerith, honey, are you okay? You never curse." Zack held his wife close and his grin wobbled a bit as she took one deep breath after another to calm herself.

"I'm fine." Aerith looked up at her husband and offered up a shaky grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm just worried. I knew it was only a matter of time when their utter _stupidity_ would get them into something that was out of their depths, but I had always hoped it would happened like twenty years from now when it would be much easier for us to step back and let them handle their own issues. I guess life doesn't bother with what I want, huh?"

"No, it never does." Zack looked back at the dispersing crowd around the twins, Riku and Axel in the thick of things, marshalling together those who would want to go looking for the missing pair around the park that Axel had rented for his party. "But I don't think we have to worry as much as you think we do. I said I didn't think the bet was a good idea, not that Cloud and Leon were in trouble. In fact, I think they're better than they ever have been."

Aerith was visibly surprised as this and Zack took her momentary pause and moved her away from the people the swirled around them and into an empty gazebo a few feet away so as to have a better chance of not being overheard.

"Zack…" Aerith said his name carefully as though she were walking on eggshells and one wrong move would produce the loud crack that would wake some kind of sleeping dragon. "Tell me what you heard."

"Well, believe it or not, Leon is apparently a very insecure little puppy underneath the big, bad wolf exterior." Zack suppressed a chuckle at her stunned expression at his words. Aerith normally had a very good read on people, and she knew Cloud about as well as anyone who wasn't Leon was capable, but Leon was always a mystery that even she had trouble with from time to time. Not many people tended to get past the brunette's overly protective nature. "Hey, you knew he cared about them, is it really such a big leap to assume there's a bit more under there than a well of devotion so deep that it sweeps every obstacle out of his way?"

"No." Aerith bit her bottom lip in thought. "I guess I always knew there was something more, no one can be that much of an asshole and yet still have so much love to give without having gained some form of dimension. I just never thought about it much is all. Oh… And I think Leon's more like a dozing lion than a big, bad wolf. He's a lot of posturing and a whole hell of a lot of protection for his family, but he's not sneaky enough to qualify for wolfhood. He's very much a straightforward kind of crazy."

Zack laughed heartily. "Okay, I'll give you that one. Cloud is more of the jump from out of the shadows and chew your arm off type. Anyways, back to the matter at hand, this whole bet shit got Leon thinking about his and Cloud's relationship and how they never actively hid anything and yet no one knew about them. Obviously this naturally led him to believe he was a bad boyfriend because he took Rinoa out and everyone knew about them and was rooting for them and he never did any of that for Cloud. By the way, Cloud is strangely mature for a blonde idiot that loves nothing more than shirking his responsibilities and causing chaos."

Now it was Aerith's turn to laugh. "Yes, well, we've always known this and yet the world continues to underestimate him time and time again."

"True story." Zack waited for a moment as a group of inebriated young men rushed past them with lit fireworks, intent on shooting them into a mass of females that were talking off to the side mistakenly thinking that it would make them seem like manly men who were worthy of the women's attentions. "Anyways, Cloud pretty much verbally bitch slapped him, twice, on two completely different subjects and I think their relationship is more solid than it's ever been and, uh, you can stop worrying about them is the main point of this I think."

"I…" Aerith fumbled about for something of substance to stay. She had finally settled on one of her more probing questions when a stray blazing ball of fire soared past them and they were forced to huddle together to avoid getting hit. "We are _so_ going to talk about this once we get home."

"Yeah, right in the middle of no-man's land during a firecracker war is not the best place to be having sensitive conversations." They quickly ducked as more small explosions headed in their direction, Zack pushing Aerith in front of him as they jogged out of the way and the two factions ran past, too caught up what they were doing to notice any innocent bystanders. Unsurprisingly, Yuffie was leading the charge, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that one of her best friends hadn't showed and wasn't likely to make an appearance with half an hour to midnight left to go.

And they then ran blindly from that point, only knowing that they both had quite a bit of hair between them and that hair did not take kindly to being lit on fire, neither one really seeing where they were headed until they ran face first into a very solid chest, Aerith hitting first and falling backwards to knock the both of them onto the ground.

"Owie…" Zack groaned and Aerith rolled off him and thumped onto the ground, holding her forehead as though she had just run into a brick wall instead of another human body. And, considering it was Sephiroth she had run into, that wasn't too far away from the truth, a fact Zack realized as he looked up to find his friend towering over them, a looking of mild discomfort on his face. Not even Sephiroth could completely discount a pair of people running full force into him. "Fuck, Seph, you're an inhuman monster."

The silver-haired man shrugged gracefully as he reached out a hand to help Aerith to her feet, leaving Zack to get up on his own. "I've been called worse."

Stumbling to his feet and trying to gather his wits back together, he almost missed the tense searching look Sephiroth sent over his shoulder. Glancing back, the dark-haired man saw nothing more than a knot of people ambling by with plastics cups singing a song loudly and off-tune as they made their way back towards the dance floor.

"Looking for someone?" He asked hesitantly, quirking an eyebrow at his friend. Sephiroth nodded.

"Cloud. No one's seen him since this morning." There was a small awkward pause before he continued onward. "There's something I need to talk to him about and he's not answering his phone."

Zack was about to make a comment on how it must have been a really important something to have Sephiroth searching so earnestly, when his thought was interrupted by a pair of drunken boys wandering past them, their loud conversation impossible not to overhear.

"So you gonna make her your first kiss of the new year, buddy?" The shorter one was being supported by his taller friend who actually looked as though he was the one who needed the supporting. The taller grinned lecherously.

"Hell fucking yes." They stumbled further forward but not before the taller man got in a good laugh about whatever it was that he was planning for some poor, unsuspecting woman. "Even if I have to steal it right out from under her nose, I'm going to get that kiss."

"Hell fucking yeah!"

Normally such an exchange would have inspired nothing more than laughter and slight pity from Zack since he had done his fair share of stupid things while under the influence before he'd decided to get serious about his life. However, this was not a normal situation and Zack's mind ground to an abrupt halt just before he could fully appreciate the humor of the drunken boy's situation.

"Oh, bloody fucking no you are not thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing."

Sephiroth's silence told him everything he needed to know and quite a few things he never _wanted_ to know.

"No! Bad idea! Bad fucking idea, Seph." Zack waved his arms around franticly as though doing so was going to ward away the idea and cause it not to take place. He had never been more thankful in his life that Cloud had grown a bit of common sense and had chosen not to come to the party.

"I'm assuming your reaction means that you are not going to help me find him." Sephiroth watched calmly as Zack thrashed around a bit more, knowing exactly what his friend thought of him in that moment and finding that he didn't much care. He knew what he had been asked to do, and he knew what he wanted to do, and for once his orders and his desires were on the same page. Nothing short of the apocalypse was going to stop him now that he had made up his mind.

That or Cloud not showing up at all, which was starting to becoming more and more likely as the minutes ticked way towards midnight and the start of the new year.

"Of course I'm not going to help you find him!" Zack screeched. "What you're planning is nothing short of suicide! He doesn't want anything to do with you romantically, not after what you did. This is insanity and if you actually go through with this then you are betraying him again. Do you really want to live with yourself knowing that he trusted you enough to become your friend even against his better judgments only to find that you were just waiting until the most opportune moment to swoop down and do something like this all over again?"

Sephiroth didn't even pause in his answer. "I know what I want, Zack, and it is not to live the rest of my life with him under my nose when he doesn't belong to me. I have come to terms with this and have found that I must be more morally corrupt than I ever anticipated because I just can't make myself give a fuck about trivial matters such as his trust any longer."

Zack shook his head in defeat. "You've changed. You didn't used to be like this. You used to care about him and what he thought and wanted, but somewhere along the line, it's become an obsession with you and it is not going to end well. It is not going to end well at all. He's not some puppet that you can own and fiddle with only when you want to, and Leon would be well within his rights if he wanted to run you through and there won't be a damned thing Cloud will do to stop him, and I wouldn't blame him for that either."

He would have said more but there was nothing left to say that wouldn't fall upon deaf ears. Sephiroth already looked as though he was a world away, not paying attention to the present as he was caught up in whatever desires he chose to follow that day. As much as it hurt Zack to see his friend in such a way, he knew it shouldn't have surprised him. Sephiroth hadn't changed overnight. He'd been gradually becoming more and more reserved, more and more obsessed, as the years wore on and Cloud's rejection, while having more to do with Sephiroth and his actions than anything Cloud had wanted, had stung and lain there for four years festering while Sephiroth had had to watch something that he thought of as rightfully his belong to someone he loathed.

And right then Zack knew that he couldn't condone Sephiroth's actions any longer. He couldn't hide them behind pretty words and flowery intentions in his own mind and there would be no defending him to his other friends. The silver-haired man had taken all of that away merely by showing up to a party.

"He's not here, Seph." Zack tried in one more last ditch attempt to get the man to see reason and hopefully go home before he did something he was going to regret. "He's not coming and even if he were, he wouldn't allow you to kiss him, whether you thought to give him a choice in the matter or not. He would rather fight you to the death than be dragged down that path again and I think you would be wise to remember that and give up on your insane infatuation before you get thrown in jail or worse."

There was something almost evil lurking in Sephiroth's eyes as he looked down at the man that had been his friend for so long. There was a spark of something not quite sane, something not quite stable that Zack hoped against all hope would not mean that Sephiroth was really considering going through with his fruitless campaign, but deep in his heart he knew it was an empty hope.

"I think I'll take my chances."

* * *

"Sephiroth's down there, and I think that's Reno lurking around in the corner." Leon's words were clipped and his voice was tense as he shot a quick glance at where Cloud was crouched down next to him in the bushes at the edge of the park. Cloud hadn't wanted to go to the party after all, but Zack's sudden presence at the Strife's house earlier that day had convinced him that something was supposed to be going down and that they had gone through too much to give up on winning the bet now. "I don't like this. I think we should go home."

Cloud grunted in agreement. "I _know_ we should go home, but I don't think we're going to. Whatever it is that Sephiroth wants to do, he's not going to stop just because we're at home. I think Thanksgiving should have shown you that."

Now it was Leon's turn to grunt his agreement. "You're probably right about that, but I don't want to go out there unless we know what it is that they are planning."

"If we hide behind Tifa and her group they can't really do much." Cloud suggested. "We might end up in closer quarters to each other than I would like with alcohol in my system, but Sephiroth won't be able to get to me so easily. Maybe he'll even give up and save it for another day, and by that time we'll be better prepared to handle whatever form of insanity he's been cooking up."

"We could also go take refuge with Zack and not bother with either faction." Leon pointed out. "Though I don't know whether Aerith's entirely trustful either. She is best friends with Tifa. They share everything with each other. There is no way she _doesn't_ know about this."

"That and Zack gets distracted by shiny objects, much less Reno, who's still out there… Somewhere." Cloud's blue eyes scanned the gathering and finally found the red-head in question, having an animated conversation with Axel and Roxas right in the middle of the more frenzied part of the party. "Over with Axel… That's not a good idea at all."

"No, no it's not, but I'm not going to be the one to get in the way of that blast zone." Leon sighed deeply and leant back against a nearby tree, weighing their options in his mind. "So we're stuck with knowing we have to go out there with also knowing that it would be the worst idea to do so because there is no one safe to use as a buffer."

"Story of my life."

"We could go in right after midnight. Then everyone will be so caught up in sucking face with whoever is dumb enough to wander into their sights to bother with where we've been or if we're avoiding someone." Leon's idea wasn't the best and he knew it, but it was just about all they had at the moment.

"I still don't trust this… Situation." Cloud sounded equal parts thoughtful and worried. "Something's not right here."

"Nothing's going to be right until this whole deal is done and behind us where it belongs." Leon pulled gently on the edge of Cloud's shirt, easing him back so they were pressed together. "But that doesn't matter so much anymore. I'm not going to leave you no matter what happens and you aren't going to be leaving me."

"Nice to see that you've finally gotten some confidence in us." Cloud murmured humorlessly, but he wasn't angry about it anymore. They'd long since passed this hurdle. "No matter what happens I don't want anyone else, I don't need anyone else, and if you try to leave me I'm going to hunt you down and drag you back. Are we clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good."

They stood like that for a long time, neither one speaking with Cloud leaning against Leon's broad chest and Leon's arms wrapped around his waist, thinking their own private thoughts and steeling themselves for what was going to happen once they joined the party.

Eventually there was only one minute left to midnight and the crowds on the lawn in front of them turned to where Axel had placed a giant digital clock, their excitement mounting to an almost tangible feeling as the clock began to count down the last sixty seconds of the old year.

"You gonna be my first kiss?" Cloud teased as Leon tightened his grip on the blonde's hips.

"Of course." Leon responded and Cloud shifted around in the brunette's arms so that they were practically nose to nose. "You ask as though you were actually were going to have a choice in the matter."

Cloud grinned as they heard the roar of the crowd counting down the second in the background, thinking nothing more than that he was going to enjoy this kiss because it was going to not only be the first one of the year, but it was also going to be the one that he was going to use to seal them together in his mind for the rest of his life because from this point there was going to be no going back. They were in it for the long haul.

"5!"

"4!"

"3!"

"2!"

"1!"

"Happy fucking New Year…"

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A/N:

Shit... Oh, right... Review por favor?

Yeah so Sephiroth is an **ass** ya'll. When I first start this I had anticipated for him to be there as a big annoyance, with some comedic value possibly... Yeah, he said hell fucking no to that and decided to eat a bowl full of Crazy O's before coming to work this morning. Shit.... Uh... So next chappie is comin' as soon as it can. By the way I have the title for it. 'And Then the Shit Hit the Fan', which is going to be the next day and you know somethin' is about to go down ya'll. For all those who were waiting and waiting for this mysterious 'thing' between Cloud and Seph to pop up and explain itself... Well, gve me about a week or so and you'll know all that and more... 


	10. Day OneHundredTwenyFive: Shit, just shit

_**A/N: **So this is much shorter than ya'll are used to and I apologize for that but I got typing and got seven pages in and was like... You know what? There is abslutely nothing I can add tot his that isn't going to be me putzing around for ten pages to make it super long... So, Good side: You get an update within a day of the last one for once! (I know, gasp!) Bad side: Is short._

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**Chapter Eight:**

_**Day One–Hundred and Twenty-Five: And Then the Shit Hit the Fan**_

"I swear, I thought he was going to kill him! It took twenty people, _twenty_, to hold him back!"

"I heard that Sephiroth had to go to the hospital and stay overnight for observation."

"Well, _I_ heard that he had a broken arm and that they still can't find his ear."

"Dude, I was totally there. I even got blood on my sleeve. You think it'll be worth something if I try to sell it?"

"I'd buy it. I'll bet if we can find the ear it'll be worth even more!"

"For fuck's sake!" The newest voice in the rising mess of nigh-hysterical young adults was tinged with the strain of having to deal with a situation he would much rather have never come to pass. He shoved his way through the crowds making their way in the general direction of the Strife house, his almost skeletally thin frame pushing people out of the way as he went. "OI!"

Everyone turned then and Axel found himself the focal point for the entire campus' attentions. Not even taking a second to pause he stood up a little straighter in order to use his considerable height to his advantage. "Alright, everyone needs to go the fuck home right now! Barring that, get the fuck off Cloud's lawn before they come after you with the lawn mower. Now is not the time to be annoying dickwads in case you haven't noticed."

"But we want to know what happened!" Someone from deep inside the crowd called out, Axel thought it might have been Zell but it was hard to tell.

Axel sighed dramatically and squared his shoulders against the barrage of questions and complaints that had arisen from the statement. He held his hands up for silence, hoping against all hope that he could get at least some of them to leave before one of the Strife's decided that they might as well go the whole nine yards when it came to attempting murder. How he'd gotten himself stuck with curious bystander duty was beyond him, but he did know that Roxas would never forgive him if they somehow got past him and attempted to break into the house.

"Sephiroth is _fine_." Axel stressed, slightly concerned as some of the watching audience actually seemed disappointed at that news. "He didn't lose an ear or whatever else you were going on about. He does have a concussion, a split lip, and a new understanding of intense groin pain, but he's not in the hospital and he's not bleeding copiously and probably never was, so go the fuck home!"

The crowd groaned but slowly turned to trickle away down the street, apparently not concerned beyond knowing the full scale of the damages. Axel waited until the last one had turned the corner and was out of sight before making his way up the concrete trail that led to the Strife's front door, slipping into the darkened entryway as quietly as humanly possible and slinking into the living room to place a reassuring hand on his boyfriend's shoulder.

"They've all gone home." Axel said quietly, his voice carrying easily in the uncanny silence that had descended up on the room from the moment they had noticed the gathering crowds.

Mrs. Strife looked up from where she had been contemplating her hands at the sound of his voice and sent the red-head a reassuring smile. "Thank you, Axel."

Axel nodded in recognition and tightened his grip on Roxas' shoulder as the smaller blonde clenched his jaw, taking a moment to take in the silent tableau in front of him.

Mrs. Strife was perched uneasily on the one armchair in the room, once more staring at her hands as though they held all the answers she was looking for. Her skin was paler than usual and her skin was pinched almost painfully at the corners of her eyes, almost as though she were trying to hold something much more potent than she could handle.

Right behind her, flanking her on either side, was Riku and Sora, each one looking pale and drawn and both were fidgeting and their eyes were flickering from Mrs. Strife to Roxas and everywhere in between. Sora had something that was bordering on tears in his eyes and Riku's knuckles were white from how hard he was clenching them at his side, almost like he was trying to physically restrain himself from doing something he was going to regret. Axel was pretty sure that he was, and he wasn't the only one. Roxas was _shaking_ underneath Axel's calming grasp.

But that wasn't what had all of Axel's attention. It was the center of the room everyone was looking at where Leon was stalking back and forth with a predatory gleam in his eye, unable to stand still as he slunk gracefully back and forth with his jaw set into a grim line as he ground his teeth and his fists stuffed deeply into his pockets as though he didn't trust himself not to hurt someone if he didn't keep them restrained. His scar stood out in stark relief as he made his way through the beams of light coming into the window from the streetlamps and the one desk lamp Mrs. Strife had thought to keep on. Every now and then his lips would twist into a snarl and he would let out a low noise that could only be described as a growl.

However, it was Cloud that held most of Axel's interest. The blonde was sitting calmly on the couch staring off into the empty fireplace grate blankly, his hands limp in his lap and his shoulders slightly hunched. His face was completely void of any emotion and he didn't even seem to notice that small tendrils of his bangs had drifted down over his forehead almost in an unconscious effort to hide his eyes.

And it was what was reflected in those cerulean depths that had Axel wishing he could find some other excuse to leave the room. Another mob, a fire, the apocalypse, anything that meant he wouldn't have to see the blank and _empty_ look that lay there. It was like Cloud had just given up and that was a terrifying thought for all of them.

"What did he do to you?" Leon's voice shocked everyone except Cloud into jumping, their hearts suddenly shuddering into a dangerous rhythm as the ragged tones of tightly controlled anger swept through the room like a heated wave. A muscle at the base of Cloud's eye twitched, but nothing else moved. Leon drew in a sharp breath and stopped dead in the center of the room, his hands coming out of his pockets to grip at his hips. He leveled his seething grey eyes onto Cloud's pathetic form and waited patiently until the blonde's blue eyes flickered up to meet his heated gaze. Satisfied that he had Cloud's attention at long last, Leon spoke again.

"_What_ did he _do_ to you?"

There was a moment when the words hung between the two of them and there was nothing in the world except them and whatever this 'thing' was that had placed itself between them. In that moment those watching tensed to the point of snapping, running their wires as tightly as possible and nearly choking on a tension so palpable that they could taste it as the words lay there as a dead 'thing' in the middle of the floor, something everyone knew was there but that no one wanted to acknowledge because acknowledgement would make it real, would force it to be answered and dealt with.

Cloud took a shaky breath and closed his eyes as though he were in pain, but he didn't get up to leave and he didn't brush the question off like he normally would have and once his eyes had opened again there was something there, something broken and painful. When he finally spoken his voice was dead, broken and unemotional. It was like he couldn't gather even the smallest bit of caring together, but it was strong and clear, plain and straight to the point in a way that he never was. One small sentence, one small fact and it all came crashing down.

"He raped me."

The air had been sucked out at the room and the floor dropped out from under their feet. No one breathed, no one moved as Leon wavered on his feet, clearly torn between his need to stay and comfort Cloud and his sudden white hot urge to find Sephiroth and finished what Cloud had started only an hour previous. Most of all, however, there was shock written deep onto his handsome features as he finally stumbled backwards, his back making contact with the cool marble of the fireplace behind him as he used the wall to lower himself to the ground with a gentle thud, his eyes locked wide and staring as a whirlwind went on in their tumultuous depths.

"It was senior year." It took the others a few second to realize that Cloud was talking to them, his voice still the same cold monotone. He was trying to distance himself from the memory, trying to make it about the facts only and not about his feelings. "Sephiroth had asked me if there was ever a chance of me liking him as anything other than a friend. I… Well, I didn't see a problem with trying so we agreed to keep it under wraps for a while until we figured out whether we were going to work or not and went into a relationship of sorts. He wasn't so bad, not at first but after about two months he started wanting more than I was willing to give to him."

Cloud was now unfocused, not in the present anymore at all. He was now firmly in the past and his family was right there with him. It was so easy for them to see Sephiroth, so confident and assured, approaching Cloud in the hall or in the mall, asking such a delicate question without even the slightest hint of fear or embarrassment should Cloud refuse. And Cloud, always willing to please a friend, weighing the pros and cons in the way he would only when it came to the most delicate of situations, smiling as he agreed to give it a try. Growing more and more nervous and uncomfortable as the days wore on and Sephiroth began to drop more and more hints that he wanted something more than what Cloud was offering, his advances becoming more and more forceful as time wore on and his patience wore thin…

"He invited me over to his house one day, saying that Riku was supposed to be spending the night at our house with Sora." Cloud took a deep breath and tried to shore up the last of his courage. "I told him I wasn't going to stay all night. I had a test in Spanish the next day and I needed to study for it, but I was more worried about what he would ask of me were I to stay more so than concerned about the test. He said he understood but that I could still come over for awhile. He asked me if I trusted him. Of course I did, I said, how could he ever think that I wouldn't? So we left my bike in the school parking lot with his promises that he would take me back for it later and we went over to his place."

"I should have said no. I should have known that he was hiding something, planning something. In hindsight, all the signs were there but I was stupid. I wanted to trust him. I wanted to think that he wouldn't do anything I wasn't comfortable with, that he would pull away and take me home if it got to a point I wasn't ready to get to. I should have fucking known better but I didn't want to think about that." A single tear slid down Cloud's pale cheek, the only testament to how much his recollections were really affecting him.

"It got late. I wanted to go home. He agreed but said he had to get something out of his room first and I, being an idiot, followed him. He… locked the door… and…" Here Cloud paused and screwed his eyes shut. "After it was over I wanted to go home. I tried to leave, but he stopped me. I waited until he fell asleep and tried to leave again, but I was hurt and slow, and he caught up to me before I could get out of the house. He dragged me back… I hit him and he hit me back… Again and again and again until I could do no more than lay there and take it… Then… Then he did it again."

"'Mine,' he said. 'You're mine and I'm not going to let you go.'" Cloud's eyes opened once more and they were more focused this time, more determined. "Not his, never his. I was never going to belong to him or anyone so when he fell asleep again I ran. It hurt, but I refused to stop until I knew I was too far away for him to find me. I was bleeding, and I had to stop and call for help. Zack's house was closest and he drove me home. He wanted to call the cops, but I made him swear to never tell another soul. To this day I don't know why he agreed to listen to me, but there are times when I half wish he didn't. All I could think about was how I wanted to get home, needed to get home. I snuck in and buried myself under my covers. I begged Leon to tell Mom I was sick and didn't want to go to school and he did. After the house was empty I showered and cleaned myself up, luckily all of the bruises were in places that I could easily hide, and I went back to bed and didn't get up until dinner that night. The next day at school Sephiroth tried to come up to me in class and I walked away. I didn't want to see him or talk to him ever again, but Reno wore me down. I consented to be his friend again, to forget what happened so long as he never touched me like that ever again… Apparently he didn't care to keep that promise either."

Mrs. Strife was crying openly as his story drew to a close and she leapt out of her chair to sit by his side and cradle him in her arms as though he were still six and had gotten a small scrape. Riku was fuming silently, rooted to the spot by an anger he could barely control and Sora had fallen into the now empty chair and was caught up in a slew of dry heaves. Roxas swayed on his feet and leant back against Axel for support, the red-head himself too shocked for the full force of what had just been said to hit him just yet. Leon hadn't moved a muscle from his position on the floor.

But Cloud wasn't done speaking yet.

"When he… kissed me tonight. I just snapped." Cloud took another deep, shuddering breath as though he was finally coming to grips with the situation, like a man rising up from a ten year coma only to find that his life had moved on without him. "All I saw was his stupid ass smirk as he told me that I belonged to him and I knew that I had to do something to wipe that smirk off his face or I was going to explode, so I kneed him in the groin and just kept on coming. I wasn't thinking. All I knew was that I wanted to cause him as much pain as he caused me and that was wrong of me. It was wrong of me but I would do it again."

"I wish I could say that I can't believe my brother would do something like this, but that would be a lie." Riku slowly took a step forward like he believed that if he moved too fast then there would be nothing stopping him from running straight home to confront Sephiroth with what he had just learned and then beat the hell out of him. "Mrs. Strife, I know this is probably a bad time to ask, but would you mind if stayed here for the rest of the break. I don't think I could stand to live in the same house as him right now."

"Of course, sweetheart." Mrs. Strife sounded tired as she unwrapped her arms from around her unresponsive son. "In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you went home right now I'd make some kind of excuse to go with you so I could kill him myself."

"Is no one going to call the cops?" Sora's voice sounded far away and almost strangled as he gasped to try and keep a sufficient amount of air into his body. "He shouldn't get away with this! He should go to jail!"

"Stop, Sora." Cloud was finally stirring a bit in his seat, now finding himself very uncomfortable with the eyes of his family looking at him with obvious concern. "This is over. It's not going to happen again, I'm not going to let it. I was young and an idiot, and while I didn't deserve what happened to me, I didn't do anything to stop it either. I just… Don't want anyone to know, okay?"

"I understand, sweetie." Mrs. Strife cooed and Cloud relaxed. Of course she understood, she'd been there before. She knew his pain, his embarrassment, his rage, and even his fear that it would happened again. That everyone was out there waiting for the most opportune moment to get him. Only this hadn't been a stranger, like it had been for her. This had been a friend, someone Cloud thought he could trust and that was a pain that was not going to go away just because the offender had gone to jail. "Boys, I think it's time that we head up to bed now. We can discuss this in the morning once everyone is well rested and less likely to commit murder on a whim, okay?"

The boys nodded as they broke off into pairs to disappear up the stairwell with Mrs. Strife helping Cloud up the stairs and to his room before coming back to help Leon in much the same way, the brunette much too shocked to be able to make it on his own. And the house settled down into an uneasy peace as they drifted off into sleep, each one exhausted to the point where even thinking was too hard for them to indulge in.

Everyone except Cloud and Leon.

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"We're going to have to have a _conversation_ about this aren't we?" Cloud sighed deeply as he snuggled deeper into Leon's protective embrace, not fooling himself for the slightest second that this was an issue that was going to go away on its own. In fact, he was surprised that Leon hadn't marched straight out of the living room to commit murder in his name right then and there.

"Not if you don't want to." Leon murmured into the blonde's hair, trying to keep some semblance of order to his chaotic thoughts before he went insane. "I'd like to know why you didn't tell me, though."

Cloud shrugged. "I didn't think anyone needed to know. It happened, whoop de freakin' do. There was nothing you or I could do about it at that point, but I knew you were sure as hell going to try, so I didn't say anything. It was my fault and my stupidity and you weren't even speaking to me very much at it was at the time for even agreeing to _try_ to like that jerk. Shit happens."

"But you had to have been mentally screwed up." Leon protested, all thoughts of not forcing Cloud to say more fleeing from his mind in the way that his best intentions always had a way of doing when it came to Cloud and that frustrating way he had of ignoring problems that had already come to pass. "Shit, Cloud. If you had said something then I could have helped you through that. Instead I was a sullen jerk that used your sudden cold attitude towards Sephiroth as a sign that I could have what _I_ wanted again. I never once asked you what happened or why you broke up with him. Fuck, I even pushed you into having sex not even two weeks later even though I knew you were hesitant about it for some reason. I could have hurt you even more than he did and I wouldn't have even known it because I wasn't thinking about anyone other than myself."

"Well, you didn't hurt me and it's been four fucking years and I just want to forget about it, okay?" Cloud's voice had a harsh ring to it that spoke of finality, but Leon couldn't let it drop. He couldn't let Cloud go through this all over again alone. He couldn't be there for the blonde the last time, but he was sure as hell going to be there this time, whether Cloud liked it or not, and if it made Cloud hate him, then fine, but he was not going to give up.

"Yeah, it has been four fucking years, hasn't it? But that doesn't mean you've forgotten. There are things that still remind you of it, that jump out and take you by surprise when you least expect it." Cloud tensed in his arms but Leon went on, knowing that if he stopped now then he was never going to get to say what he wanted. "You aren't a thing to be owned, Cloud. You are your own person with your own goals and thoughts and talents. He may have thought you were nothing more than a pretty toy that he wanted, but you're not. Running away from him proved that, not to him because he's a psycho that shouldn't be cleared to be in society, but it proved it to yourself, and there is not a person alive today that is going to take you against your will. Never. You won't allow it."

Cloud snorted into Leon's shoulder but he did relax a bit. "You mean that you won't allow it."

Leon shook his head even though Cloud couldn't see it. "No. This has nothing to do with me. I don't own you either."

Silence so long that Leon almost thought Cloud had fallen asleep and then...

"Thank you…"

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_**A/N: **Uh damn.... Anymore of this and I'm going to have to axe humor from the category... Shit..._


	11. Day OneHundredFourtyFour: Narnia?

_**A/N: **Sorter than usual chapter, but hey, the next chapter I'm planning should well make up for it.... But... While it is tentatively planned to be released on Valentine's Day... That's also my birthday and I'm going out of town to celebrate it with a friend... So I don't know whether or not it will be on time. I'm hoping so since this is the chapter I've been waiting for write for forever, but you know how plans tend to go out the window from time to time._

_In other news... I've decided to take a trick from out of just about every author's book and being to reward reviewers for, well, reviewing. It makes me happy to get them, so I guess it should make you happy to give them... So contest time! Woot! Reviewer 75 gets a one shot of their choice... YAY!_

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**Chapter Eight**

_**Day One-Hundred and Forty-Four: But We're Always Late on the First Day**_

"The only thing accomplished over the break was that the whole school now knows that Sephiroth is a possessive asshole who is no longer friends with my brother and that said brother can throw a right hook that would make Mike Tyson cry." Sora sighed and blew upwards on his bangs, mentally reminding himself to coerce Leon into taking him to get a haircut since Sora's car was in the shop and Leon needed one anyway. "I think that we should just give this whole bet up on both sides because it's not worth it."

Axel sighed into his coffee. "As much as I would like to agree with you, I don't think that's going to happen. There are too many people with a whole hell of a lot more than our measly two hundred munny each invested in this and they aren't going to want to pull out so long as they think they have a chance at winning."

"Wow, you _can_ speak logically from time to time. Who knew?" Riku flipped through a few pages in his Advanced Chemistry book without taking in any of the information. "Fuck, this is the shittiest new year I think I've ever lived through."

"Just because your brother turned out to be more of a psychopath than we thought he was doesn't mean you have to be a sullen jerk about it." Roxas rubbed his fingers in soothing circles over his forehead. "The good news in all of this is that Leon's actually been speaking civilly to Axel ever since he chased away the curious mob. I guess something good can come of every situation if you just look hard enough, though I am surprised Cloud didn't get carted away for assault and battery."

"Probably because Seph was worried that Cloud was going to get him for statutory rape." Riku's grip tightened almost imperceptibly on his own coffee cup as he thought about all the things he would have liked to do his brother in retaliation for hurting someone that had been a better brother to him than his own blood had been. "Seph was eighteen back then, remember. He would be rotting away in jail forever if Cloud ever decided to press charges."

"Which he won't because he's a stubborn asshole that doesn't want to put away someone who deserves it because he thinks that he was asking for it or something equally twisted." Roxas' eyes flashed with rage and he had to take a minute to pull himself back together. It had been almost twenty days since Cloud had broken down and told them about what Sephiroth had done to him, and yet the hot flare of anger had yet to leave any of them, and they were beginning to doubt it ever would.

And Cloud had been carrying such a burden alone for four years? It was so far beyond their comprehension that it left them impotently shaking their heads and chasing their thoughts around in circles with nothing to show for it.

"How did Leon react?" Sora asked after a moment of silence. "Does anyone even know? He didn't so much as move the whole time Cloud was talking and then neither of them was there when we woke up. I'm worried about him. He doesn't take things like this lying down. He even ran away for two days when he found out about Mom. It's not like either of them to just pack up and move back to the apartment without a moment's notice either. They didn't even tell Mom where they were going or if they were going to be back."

"He seems fine now." Roxas muttered as the four boys looked up to see Cloud bouncing across the Quad with a sleep-deprived Leon in tow. "In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd say nothing has changed at all, not even since the first day of school."

The other boys nodded in agreement and their conversation faded away as Cloud and Leon made their way to their customary seats, Cloud balancing two coffees precariously in one hand while Leon sank gratefully into his chair and buried his head in his arms in hopes of getting at least a few minutes worth of sleep before he was to be dragged off to class against his will.

"Hey, how's having to get up early treating you?" Cloud asked politely, more concerned with the way his coffees were tilting than with how his brothers' mornings had gone. He quickly placed Leon's coffee down in front of the brunette and took a gulp of his own before placing it on the table as well.

Axel shrugged. "Same as it always does. It makes me want to die a little bit on the inside, and then I spend about ten minutes plotting when I'm going to be able to catch an hour long power nap or something at some point during the day and then I move on with my life. I see eight a.m. is not treating Leon any better than it ever has."

"Sure isn't." Cloud quipped as Leon mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like a death threat concerning the early hours of the morning and exactly where they could shove themselves. "You'd think that after spending a good chunk of his life having to get up and cram knowledge into his head at the crack of dawn, he would be over this by now, but you would be wrong."

"And you would think that after spending a good portion of your life avoiding assault charges you would think to not surround yourself with people after nine p.m., but you would also be wrong." Roxas offered up sarcastically as he contemplated the inside of his empty coffee cup and wondered why no one had invented a magical self-refilling cup as of yet. "You got Valentine in the morning again?"

"Of course." Cloud answered, poking Leon in the side as a sign that time was running out and he really should get started with putting some caffeine in his system before it was too late. "I'm cruel but not heartless. I wouldn't want Leon having to break in a new teacher to his class sleeping habits with only a few months to go before we get out of here for good. That wouldn't be fair to the poor teacher."

"Wow, you guys really are leaving." Sora seemed almost awed by this thought. "I guess I never really thought about it much. I always just assumed that you guys were going to be here. Campus sure is going to be weird without you."

"Have we really ingratiated ourselves so much in the space of three and a half years that campus is going to literally wither without our presence?" Cloud asked incredulously. "Hell, if anything I would think that most people here would love to see us go."

"Teachers don't count, Cloud." Leon had lifted his head up and was now considering the cup of coffee in front of him as though trying to figure in his mind whether it was worth the effort it would take to reach out and drink it as opposed to just giving up on life and falling asleep right then and there. "And neither does Reno. He's an asshole anyway."

Cloud raised an eyebrow in amusement but otherwise seemed unconcerned. "In any case, I guess I'm going to miss this, too, at least a little bit. There is always something to be said for structured learning in any of its forms. Seems safer than the real world."

"Seems more boring than the real world." Riku added his two cents into the conversation as he scribbled something on the margin of his text. "By the way, Yuffie's on her way over and it looks like she's about to launch herself onto you."

"Thank you, sir." And with that Cloud scooted over an inch in his seat, moving out of the way as a blur of black and blue (Yuffie was going through a blue phase where the only thing she would wear was some variation of that color) attached itself to Leon with a loud squeal.

"Fuck!" Leon did not sound too pleased at this newest development and he probably would have pushed the girl away and then proceeded to pummel her into the ground had she not had his arms pinned uncomfortably to his side. "Get the bloody hell off of me!"

"But Leeeeeon, I looooove yoooooou!" Yuffie wailed as she began to rock side to side, nearly knocking not only Leon but also Cloud and Sora (who was unfortunate enough to be on Leon's other side) off their own chairs in the process.

"You suck, I hate you, GET OFF!" Leon flailed about hopelessly for a minute before giving up and leaning back his chair, hoping that going limp would be enough of a cue for Yuffie to stop trying to crush him to death.

"Professor Valentine's getting his mail. I'd say we've got about five minutes if we want to make a half-decent entrance this time around." Yuffie chirped happily, not concerned at all about Leon's lack of interest in her attack, knowing that he was just faking his disinterest. "Poor, Vinny. I wonder what he's ever going to do without us."

"Live a full and happy life without having to worry that one of us is going to stage a hostile takeover of his class just for the hell of it?" Cloud suggested as he pulled himself to his feet. "Come on, Leon. This is our last time crashing his class on the first day. We've gotta make it special."

"What if I don't _want_ to make it special?" Leon complained, but he allowed himself to be tugged to his feet none the less, remembering to grab his untouched coffee at the last second as he went.

"Don't care." Yuffie and Cloud chorused at the same time, each one grinning evilly as they propelled the tired man forward.

"Sometimes I worry that the universe collapses just a little bit when Cloud and Yuffie come together… The other times, I'm too busy being alternately entertained and scared to bother much with thought in general." Roxas muttered to himself as he watched them make their noisy way across the Quad, Leon still protesting against any suggestion that didn't involve allowing him to go back to his dorm room to sleep and Cloud and Yuffie planning what was probably the very same hostile takeover Cloud had been talking about before over the brunette's head.

"Let's just pray that they don't decide to work together to conquer the world." Sora answered distractedly as he shook his head at his elder brother's antics.

"I hear you, brother, I hear you."

* * *

"Vinny! Did you miss us?"

Vincent Valentine was not one to openly groan in frustration or to bury his head in his hands at the thought of some struggle or task, but four years with Yuffie had very nearly broken him of his habit of holding himself back and it was by a very slim margin that he managed to keep his composure and not give into his thoughts of throwing up his hands and giving in then and there.

"Ms. Kisaragi, you are late for what must be the hundredth time. Please take your seat." Vincent was angry. In fact, he was radiating anger in such a way that the freshmen in the front row were turning green and were in danger of being forced to the floor under the oppressive weight of his barely restrained rage and loathing. The little ninja wanna-be just waved cheerfully and bounced her way up to his podium. "And where is Mr. Strife and Mr. Leonhart? You three never come to class separately."

Generally, Vincent wouldn't have cared where his students were, being very much of the opinion that if they didn't want to benefit from his terror-inducing teaching style then they deserved every last failure they got from him, but this was a different case. This was the first day of classes and the last time Yuffie, Cloud and Leon had to make a scene and leave their mark on his psyche forever more.

And while Leon would probably be too tired to care what his friends were up to, Cloud would not be and he would revel in anything and everything that could cause Vincent any amount of discomfort because he was an asshole like that.

"Right, here Mr. Valentine." And with that one statement, Vincent felt a chill of something akin to terror race through his spine in a way that was unusual and not wanted in the slightest as Cloud sauntered into the classroom with Leon stumbling behind him carrying a bundle of what looked to be bedding. All three of them were disrespectful brats that enjoyed making his life a living hell just because they could, but they had never lost that last shred of reverence that had them still referring to him as a professor, even though it was painfully obvious that he was more of an excuse to keep their hours high enough to still be classified as honor students.

Vincent bit back a horrified curse and inwardly cringed as he heard the semi-amused twitters of the freshmen behind him, realizing that all the fear he had already been in the process of instilling in their young, impressionable minds was already slipping away like the grains of his precious sanity. Damn those fucking kids to hell and back. If there hadn't been stupid little annoyances called 'laws' there would no doubt have been three bodies lying before him… Mostly likely bleeding copiously from many, many wounds.

"Hi, class!" Yuffie chirped brightly as she bounced her way up to Vincent's podium, gently pushing the teacher out of the way, him being much too stunned to protest like he should have. Cloud and Leon quickly followed, with Cloud taking up a spot next to the hyperactive ninja wanna-be and Leon dropping his bedding and beginning to construct what looked to be some kind of nest behind them, disappearing among the many folds of the comforter he'd thought to bring once he had arranged them into something resembling a working order.

"Now, Mr. Valentine has been teaching this class for _forever_…" Which was untrue. Vincent had only been teaching at the college for five years. He wasn't _that_ fucking old, not that Yuffie cared. Hell, for her five years really might have felt like forever. "So Mr. Strife and I decided that we would let him lie back and relax for a period today. So I'll be your co-teacher for the day, Miss Kisaragi, and you can quite plainly see Mr. Strife, my stunning blonde other co-teacher… And, uh, you can't really see Mr. Leonhart, but he's pretty much going to be sleeping the whole time anyway so I guess there's really no point in getting him to come out and introduce himself. Oh, and anyone who wakes him up will not only fail for the day, but will also be subjected to running for their life."

"And he can run for a fucking long time, so I wouldn't do that." Cloud added helpfully even though there was a small part of him that would have immensely enjoyed watching Leon chase a terrified freshman all over campus. As amusing as watching Axel run for his life on almost a daily basis was, that tended to get old. "Oh, and only the teacher can cuss 'cause that's bad manners and you shouldn't be speaking to your elders in such a way. We are wiser than you, you know."

Vincent snorted and muttered something that sounded oddly like 'You wish' but he backed away from the podium anyway and took up a spot brooding in the corner of the room. As much as he would have loved to cause a scene and take back his classroom, he knew that Yuffie was probably banking on it and wouldn't let go without a fight. Hell, it was going to be his last agonizing semester with them as it was. They might as well have their fun now and then disappear off into the vague uncertainty that was the outside world where he would never have to see them again.

At least, he was praying that he would never have to see them again, which, considering he was a happy atheist who had no plans to find God, was saying a lot.

"Righty-O! Let's get started then, shall we?"

Although it was going to take a hell of a lot of restraint in order not to maim them if Yuffie kept cheerfully chirping each and every word as though she was a bluebird who'd found the remnants of an almost full Pixie-Stix bag and had proceeded to eat every last sugar granule she could find.

Fuck, it was going to be the longest hour of his life.

* * *

"Check YouTube! It's hilarious. I thought Professor Valentine was going to either spontaneously combust or just plain get up and walk out, but not before wounding them a bit just for good measure." Axel was bouncing up and down in his seat in the Rec Center, completely ignoring his lunch in favor of telling Roxas and Sora about the newest humorous tidbit he'd found on the Internet that morning. Normally it was something slightly on the gross side and done by people he didn't even know, but today was different. "I would just like to say, before you see it for your own eyes, that Cloud and Yuffie are a formidable team and I would never want to get on their bad side."

"I wish I could pretend for a minute that you were making this up to worry me, but, sadly enough, not even _you_ could make up something so far-fetched." Roxas sighed into his soda and ran a hand through his hair. "God… Now we're going to be getting fifty million phone calls from Mom asking us why we didn't stop them and how dare we not keep a better eye on our _elder_ brothers."

"Because it's totally _our_ jobs to make sure they don't do something so horrendously stupid that they can't bullshit their way out of it." Sora offered up sarcastically as he distractedly pushed some French fries around on his plate, having suddenly lost his appetite. "So I guess that rumor about Leon being seen chasing a tiny freshman through the South Quad was true after all."

"Sure was." Axel was smirking almost as though he had been the one to entertain thousands of people via Internet that day. "He was apparently not a very smart freshman and didn't take Cloud at his word when he warned them that anyone waking Leon up would not only fail but end up running for their very _lives_. Cloud got every moment on camera, too. And that's not all; they were being followed by the whole class and a very harried looking Professor Valentine who was too busy yelling death threats to bother with actually helping the poor freshman. He also tackled Cloud and attempted to get the camera. Pure fucking gold."

"Mom's going to kill us, Roxas." Sora whimpered. "She's going to kill us. She's not even going to stop to think that we might not have been in on this one. Nope, she's just going to go for the jugular and ask questions later."

"If she even bothers to ask questions at all." Roxas added as he glumly pushed his tray of food away. He wasn't going to eat it now anyways.

Before anyone could comment on that Riku came running at them at a full sprint, clutching something white and paper-like in the hand not trying to keep his bookbag from tripping him.

"Sora! Your brothers are fucking amazing!" Riku sounded a bit out of breath, but he had sprinted from his dorm all the way to the Rec Center so that was to be expected. The silver-haired young man plopped down into the nearest empty chair and attempted to catch his breath before continuing on. "Dude! It's all over fucking YouTube, man! Cloud and Yuffie took over Professor Valentine's class and then Leon chased a freshman for ten minutes before Professor Highwind showed up and tackled him."

"Wait!" Axel was bouncing so quickly in his excitement that he was almost vibrating now. "I didn't see that part. The video I saw cut off when Professor Valentine tackled Cloud and the camera lens broke."

"Yeah, that's the one I found at first, but Yuffie just posted her half about ten minutes ago and it picks up about where Professor Valentine broke Cloud's camera and continues on to Leon being hauled away by a combination of Professor Highwind and Professor Wallace. Oh, and _then_ Yuffie helps the kid escape before Leon can break free. It's fucking awesometastic."

"Damn! I have to go watch that now." Axel kicked the leg of the table in disappointment. "And here I was thinking that I had seen it all."

"Don't worry, Axel, I'm sure it's going to be up there for a long, long time. They've already got over a million hits." Riku cracked his knuckles and giggled gleefully "They'll be on the front page as a feature video if this keeps up. Then we can say we know YouTube stars! It'll be fucking _raw time_!"

Sora slammed his head down on the table and winced. "Why do we have to be related to the two most immature men in this hellhole? We're never going to live this down."

"We're going to go down in history as the brothers of the psychos that hijacked an entire classroom and then had to be forcibly subdued by three teachers before their reign of terror was ended." Roxas moaned and copied his twins actions, though he placed his head down on the table gently, rightly taking Sora's wince to mean that the table was harder than it looked.

"Hey, if you want to switch brothers, I'm all for it." Riku offered and Axel nodded his agreement in the background. "At least your brothers know how to have fun without hurting other people and being utter jackasses about life."

"But they _are_ jackasses." Sora whined and twitched a little bit. "Just because they happen to be _entertaining_ jackasses does not mean that they should get a free ride to sainthood."

"An ass is an ass is an ass." Roxas agreed.

"Were there any commas in that at all?" Axel asked curiously, ignoring his boyfriend's bad humor as the little blonde flicked him off. "Anyways… Today's tally: Cloud and Leon, well they fucking rock. Sora and Roxas… They could rock hardcore if they ever dragged the massive sticks from out of their butts!"

"Fuck you, Axel. Just fuck you."

* * *

"No, Mom, I'm quite sure that I need my spleen to live." Cloud sounded unconcerned and patient as his mother's sweet voice trickled into his ear through the receiver. In reality, he was a little bit nervous that said mother was going to show up on his doorstep in order to make good on her calm threats. "Now that you mention it, I don't exactly know what a spleen does, but I really don't want to find out the hard way when it's gone and something isn't working right, so, no, I really do think I'd like to keep it for now."

"Tell her that I want to keep my spleen, too." Leon piped up from where he was lounging around on his bed listening in on Cloud's end of the conversation.

"She doesn't want _your_ spleen. She wants mine." Cloud smirked as Leon rolled his eyes and went back to absently turning pages in a magazine. "What was that, Mom? Hm, no I think Leon's rather attached to his eyes. Well, even if he's not, _I'm_ rather attached to his eyes, so you can't have those either."

There was a small pause before Cloud continued. "Well, I don't see a reason why you can't have his ears. He already knows sign. It shouldn't be that hard for him to adjust to being deaf. No, no, I don't think I'd be too put out about that."

"She can't have my ears, Cloud. I like them where they are and I like hearing just fine." Leon flipped another page in his magazine. "Tell her that she can have a toe or something if she wants. Feet are gross anyway."

"That they are, that they are." Cloud agreed. "Leon offered to give you a toe… No, I didn't think you would want that either. Yeah, feet _are_ gross. In fact, Leon and I just agreed on that. Oh we do agree sometimes. We'd kill each other if we didn't… Yes, we'll think about what we did and refrain from posting our misdeeds where the whole world can see… Okay, next time we'll make sure that your friends _can't_ see it. Love you, too. Bye, Mom."

"She wanted your spleen?" Leon asked half-heartedly from his position on his bed as Cloud hung up the phone.

Cloud shrugged. "I'm sure that it seemed like a good organ to harvest at the time. She seemed more amused than angry, and slightly disappointed that she had to hear it from her friends as opposed to us sending her a link to it immediately."

"Good to know that she condones our bad behavior and would like to have a front row seat for the next time we let our childish impulses rule us." Leon sighed deeply and tossed his magazine to the floor. "Though I would like to put on the record that it was not my idea to take over his class, and the children were warned not to wake me. It's not my fault that someone was an idiot and wanted to prove he had balls or something. Also… Professor Highwind, he's a strong motherfucker. I think he pulled my shoulder out of socket."

"Yeah, he's had a lot of practice at holding back strong people in a blind rage." Cloud slumped down into his chair. "That reminds me. I'm going to have to see Reno in a few hours. I don't think I have it in me not to really kill him this time."

"Well, he is an ass that's protecting an even bigger asshole. I say go for it."

"You're not helping."

"I'm also not trying." Leon ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "You know how I feel about Reno. Hell, he used to be a cool guy and if he were ever to show that he wants to be that boy who punched out the bullies that were picking on Aerith and Zack in the playground again, then I may want to be friends with him again someday. I don't see it happening, but that doesn't mean I can't hope."

"Leon…" Cloud closed his eyes and tilted his head back in an attempt to ward off a headache that was brewing deep in the back of his skull. "I'm going to have to go and pretend to be civil, aren't I?"

"I don't care what you do." Leon answered. "You know yourself better than I could. What is it that you _want_ to do?"

"I _want_ to rewind time and go back to when we were ten and the biggest thing anyone could think to fight over was who had the brighter set of crayons or who cheated at kickball, but I don't think that's going to be happening." Cloud tapped a heel against the carpet impatiently. "I also don't think I want to be his friend right now, not with the way he is acting, but when I think about it for more than a minute, I can't help but remember that he doesn't know how bad Sephiroth is. I guess I really can't fault him for acting the way he has because he just doesn't _know_ any better."

"So I'm going to be his friend for now, if he'll let me. I did beat up one of his best friends a few weeks ago and never apologized."

"You didn't have to apologize. You were in the right."

"Yeah, well, he's not going to see it like that so I'm going to have to swallow my pride for the greater good on this one. I really, really, really don't want to open up another can of worms right now. Maybe someday a long, long time from now if Reno insists on remaining friends with that bastard against all odds, I'll consider having a talk with him and letting him choose what side he wants to be on when he knows the full story, but right now is not a good time to do it. Not without letting the whole school know secrets they do not need to be knowing."

"Wow. Once again you have shown that you are only capable of maturity when there is no one outside of your family around to witness it. Congratulations."

"You know what, Leon? Just shut the fuck up."

* * *

"It's the only thing anyone has been talking about all day. I don't think you're going to be avoiding discussion of how amazing and completely stupid your brothers are." Kairi twirled a lock of red hair between her pale fingers as she contemplated a complex problem scribbled in Sora's notebook. "I think you're supposed to switch x and y here to make it even on both sides and then you can begin combining terms."

"Hm, yeah that makes sense. I guess I'm also going to have to switch the signs around to do that." Sora pulled the notebook back in his direction and tapped his pencil lightly on the page. "And I know that no one's going to be talking about anything else. They did make a public spectacle of themselves and then post it onto the Web. There's really nothing I can do about it, but that doesn't mean it isn't annoying as hell either."

"True story." Kairi chewed the bottom of her lip in thought as she watched Sora switch a pair of numbers around on his paper. "By the way… I'm crap at math. Why didn't you go get Leon to help you? This is more _his_ thing."

"Because he always knows the answer without having to do any of the work. It's like pulling teeth to get him to show me how he does it instead of just letting him automatically get the answer off the top of his head. Mainly because he doesn't know how he got the answer just that he got there somehow." Sora sighed heavily and erased a number on his paper glumly. "And Roxas isn't any help either. He's not quite as bad as Leon, but he tries to take me through it the complicated way because he likes to think that he's the genius and I need for everything to be spelled out for me in as many terms as possible before I can get it. Drives me fucking insane."

"Let me guess, Cloud's the same." Kairi frowned at the problem in question once more for good measure hoping that in doing so she would somehow make it form some amount of sense.

Sora shook his head and resisted the urge to nibble on the end of his pencil. "Nah, he sucks at math just about as much as I do. In fact, I'm pretty sure he bribed Leon with something to do his homework (not that it would take much. Leon fucking _loves_ math) and I know for a fact that he cheated on every single math test he's taken since he was in first grade and realized that Leon didn't bother to cover his answers."

"Wow…" Kairi exhaled deeply. "I know you must hear this a lot and I apologize for saying it again, but I feel as though the obvious must be pointed out after a tale of that magnitude… Your brothers are fucking crazy."

"Got that memo. _Now_ will you stop chattering on about my brothers and help me with the damn problem before I go insane?"

"Sure thing, Boss." Kairi mock saluted and went to settle down into figuring out the evil problem from the darkest pits of math hell, when she was distracted by the vague sounds of arguing coming from somewhere off to her left. Apparently, Sore heard it, too, and he groaned into his open notebook as a sign of just how much he wanted to deal with his older brothers right at the moment.

Not that Cloud and Leon would ever have cared whether he wanted to deal with them or not. Being related tended to have such common courtesies be thrown out the window for the most part.

"I'm telling you, she was out for my _spleen_." The pair of arguing men ambled over to the table where Sora was desperately trying to do his homework and not focus on a conversation he didn't think he wanted to know the meaning of. "I like my spleen."

"You don't even know what your spleen does." Leon countered, seeing Sora, noting that Sora was hunched over as though he wanted to be hidden, and deciding to join Sora at his table just for shits and giggles.

"I don't have to know what a spleen does to want to keep mine." Cloud argued back, taking up the empty seat to Kairi's right as Leon took up the chair to Sora's left. "If it wasn't important to something, then we wouldn't bother to keep them inside us in the first place, now would we?"

"So my ears are something that can be thrown away on a whim, but you get to keep your spleen on the grounds that you think it _might_ do something important?" Leon crossed his arms over his chest and scoffed. "That is not a sound argument at all, and not a valid point. Try again."

"Hey, _she_ suggested taking your ears. I was merely stating that I wouldn't mind as much, not that she could have them." Cloud added in his defense. "Anyways, she didn't take anyone's organs, internal or otherwise, so there's really no point in beating this horse to death, is there?"

"I take it Mother was not pleased with your display this morning." Sora put in blandly, not really caring to hear the answer but knowing that he was going to be dragged into the conversation sooner or later and giving in was the easiest way to get out quickly.

Leon shrugged. "I think she was more concerned that she had to find out about it from a friend instead of hearing about it from us. At least that's what Cloud said and I don't know if he's to be believed since he was intent on selling off my appendages at the time she apparently said all this."

"Bully." Was Cloud's eloquent response to this newest mockery.

"Hm. Well you got off easy then." Sora pointed out as he frowned down at his notebook once more. "Roxas and I both received five phone calls each, and none of them were full of lollipops and rainbows. Next time you want to highjack a classroom and chase a freshman for the sole purpose of putting it on the Internet, would you mind letting Roxas and I know about it first? We're not going to stop you, but we would like some ass coverage where our mother is concerned."

"Duly noted and ignored." Cloud sounded bored and he tapped a finger against the table as Leon tilted his head a bit to better see what Sora was carefully guarding in his notebook. "What's in there? A love note? A porno magazine? Anything remotely interesting?"

"5.72."

"Oh… Just a fucking math problem… So Kairi? How's life going for you?"

"Uh…" Kairi looked at Cloud in surprise, not really expecting for him to want to talk to her. In the background Sora was squawking at Leon about the math problem he had solved but now wouldn't explain and the red-head suddenly realized that she didn't really know what to say to Sora's older brother when the brunette himself wasn't around to steer the conversation. "Um, nothing really. Just school stuff."

"Do _you_ know what a spleen does?" Cloud asked seriously. Kairi furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. Cloud was known to be a bit on the odd side, but knowing about his oddities and being face to face with them was a completely different thing and it didn't look like Sora was in any position to help her out.

"Uh… It filters red blood cells and is a main storage site for lymphocytes…" Kairi answered hesitantly, not sure whether he was looking for a serious answer or was just asking anything for the sake of having a conversation. "At least, that's what my health teacher said in high school, but I'm pretty sure she was drunk most of the time so take that as you will."

"Do you think that I could live without it?" Cloud asked earnestly. "I mean, I don't _want_ to live without it, but on the off chance my mother does appear in order to sell it on the black market, do you think that I will die?"

"Wow… Um, I'm sure you can live without it to an extent…." Kairi smiled nervously. "Maybe you should just not offend your mother by doing potentially illegal things and then you won't have to worry about it."

Cloud chuckled. "Not likely, but I'll keep that in mind for future endeavors."

"Okay…"

"Leon, damn it!" Sora slammed his hands down on the table in frustration. "Just tell me how you fucking got from Point A all the way to 5.72 and then go on your merry fucking way!"

"If you would calm down for two seconds, I was about to tell you that if you don't bother with combining terms and instead insert a variable to stand as y as you solve for x then you can skip about ninety percent of the harder stuff." Leon ran a hand through his hair absentmindedly. "At least I think that's what I did. Fuck, hold on."

Sora sighed and rolled his eyes. "I appreciate you trying to help me, I really do, and you _are_ a math genius." Leon allowed a faint smirk at that. "But still, I don't think that there's anyone on this planet capable of thinking like you and I would rather like to pass my math class and I don't think Professor Merlin is going to allow for you to sit the test for me."

"I'm pretty sure Professor Merlin would rather kill himself than have Leon in his class again." Cloud commented from the sidelines, now content to be entertained by Leon's attempts at making Sora understand math once he had figured out the function of his spleen. "Next time you want to prove a teacher that his life's theory is actually wrong, you might want to make sure that he isn't a little on the crazy side."

"Maybe he should make sure his theory didn't have a hole the size of a semi and that won't be a problem." Leon shot back as he ran a finger down his scar in irritation, scowling at the offending math problem in front of him. "Well… We know the answer is 5.72, so maybe you should insert it for x and work your way backwards to understand where the answer came from."

"Wait… That's actually a good idea…" Sora quickly erased all his of previous frantic scribbles and rewrote the problem lower down in the notebook where the paper hadn't been torn and smudged by multiple erasings.

"So Leon _can_ have good ideas from time to time. Who knew?" Cloud let out an unmanly yelp when Leon's foot connected with his shin underneath the table, but he refused to retract his statement, instead choosing to continue on with his life as though he hadn't just insulted his boyfriend for the fiftieth time that day. "So I've been thinking about Zack's request for us to clean out his cabin the week of Valentine's Day… I guess if you want to go then I wouldn't be too opposed to it."

Leon shrugged. "No, I think it would be best if we stayed here after all. We can go to the orphanage and give out candy hearts to the kids or something."

"Yeah, I supposed we could do that." Cloud pondered this newest plan of action over in his head for a moment before continuing his response. "Actually, I think that's a really good idea. I don't think I would have liked the snow too much."

Leon snorted in laughter at that. "I _know_ you wouldn't have liked the snow. You buried yourself in a nest in the living room when we had those few hours of snow flurries back in December. I'd hate to see what you would do if there were banks of the stuff reaching up to your waist. We'd probably never get you out of the house long enough to get you in the car to go home."

"I know hiding in the mountains for a few months while waiting for the snow to melt is _so_ inconvenient for you, but I would hope that you would have been able to suck it up for once in order to help your cousin." Cloud sighed overdramatically as he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. "I see that I was wrong and I hope that Zack is ever going to be able to forgive you. I know it'll be hard, but I think I can find it in myself to help him try. For your sake, of course."

"I see what you're doing and it's not going to work." Leon responded as he stood as well, patting Sora gently on the head as his younger brother continued in his efforts to trace the math problem's answer back to its source. "Zack's smart enough to know when he's being manipulated. He'll never believe you."

"We'll see, we'll see."

* * *

"Cloud, can I talk to Leon about this?" Zack's voice sounded a bit strained and, considering he'd been listening to Cloud go on about snow and evil gnomes and how they were taking over Narnia or something equally insane for the past twenty minutes, the strained tone was well earned.

Zack could practically feel Cloud's slight downward twist of his lips (the closest he was ever likely to get to a pout) but the blonde handed over the phone without a fuss this time and it wasn't long before Leon's cool voice swept across the phone lines.

"Yes, Zack?"

"So he maneuvered you into agreeing that it would be best not to help me out in my time of need and then twisted it around to make it seem like it was all your idea and he was just the victim of the cruel whims of others, didn't he?" Zack asked casually, already knowing the answer.

"Of course he did. I told him you weren't going to be fooled, but he wanted to try anyways." There was a loud squawk from the other end of the line that Zack assumed was Cloud's indignant response to Leon's statement and then Leon went on. "Hey, I know Reno's not exactly the most mature person I can think of, but I don't think I have to tell you how much it would help if you could send him and get him out of our hair for a week. Maybe he'll behave if you allow him to take Rude or Tseng. We don't want to be a bother to you, but, fuck, he's being a bother to us so it would really help if he went away for awhile."

Zack paused for a second and thought about Leon's suggestion. "Yeah, I guess that might be a good idea. Aerith's not going to like it, but I think I can talk her around. I mean, Reno used to be a good guy, you know?"

"I know." Leon agreed. "Maybe he'll find a way to become the good guy again someday, but right now he's just plain annoying and I don't think any of us want this escalating to the point where we're going to lose another of our childhood friends."

In the background Zack could hear Cloud's louder than needed agreement and he sighed heavily into the phone's receiver. "I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think that this is an issue that's going to fix itself over night. First of all, Cloud's going to need to gather up the courage to tell Reno exactly how it is, and even more courage to confront Sephiroth and get some closure. The way things are now, I'm surprised he found it in him to tell _you_. It has been four years after all."

"I know."

"Secondly, Reno is going to have to work to re-earn our trust. It's sad and it shouldn't have happened this way, but there's nothing we can do about it now that it has, so we're going to have to make the best of it." Zack sat back on his couch and stared at a painting of a flower-filled field that Aerith had insisted on hanging in their living room. "I don't have to tell you that beating the stupid out of his skull isn't going to be taken the right way, do I?"

"No, you don't." Leon sounded a tad bit disappointed about that, though. "So we're agreed that we don't want to give up on Reno as of yet, but that we would like to take his crazy out of the picture at least for a week? Maybe then we can get a better view of the situation and it might not have to come down to an irreparable fight."

"I agree." Zack stated calmly, ginning widely as he heard the front door of his house opening and then slamming closed, excited at the prospect of seeing his wife after a long day of working. "I'm assuming the silence from the peanut gallery over there means that Cloud agrees as well?"

"You would assume correct." Leon responded.

"Good." Zack's grin widened to a full-out smile of massive proportions as his wife walked through the archway from the main hall and into the living room. "Hey, Aerith just got home so I'll talk to you later. Tell your mother I said hello the next time you talk to her, and try to remember not to post anything you haven't shown to her on the Internet if you don't want a phone call threatening the safety of your organs. By the way, fucking amazing prank."

"Thank you, and I'll be sure to pass the 'hello' along. Goodbye."

"Bye." And with that, Zack hung up the phone and turned his full attention to his gorgeous wife who was currently trying her hardest not to shake her head in disapproval. "Hello, Sunshine Light of my Life. How was your day?"

"It was okay." Aerith rolled her shoulders and plucked a stray string from her immaculate, pink scrubs before collapsing onto the sofa next to her husband and curling into his side. "Nobody died so that's a plus, but some new hotshot doctor got it into his head that he needs to be the one in charge even though he's only about two years out of residency. Needless to say, that's more hassle than he's really worth, but there's nothing _I_ can do about it other than dream about bashing his face through a door. How are Cloud and Leon doing?"

"Fine all things considered." Zack answered as he ran a hand gently up and down her upper arm. "In fact, I don't think their relationship has ever been more stable. The twins and Riku and Axel are still upset about the whole deal, but they're adjusting, and I really think that Leon half expected Cloud had been hiding something of this magnitude for some time now. All in all, I don't think there's much to worry about, though. I think they can handle it."

Aerith let out a quiet puff of air, the only sign of her annoyance at Cloud's stubbornness and unwillingness to let anyone help him in order to not threaten his precious independence. "Well it's about time he got the balls to tell Leon about it. I don't think he needed to get them all in one go, though. I know Mrs. Strife was in hysterics about it for days, especially after they disappeared without a word. What were they thinking to drop such a bomb and then run away?"

"They didn't think, but what else is new?" Zack placed a chaste kiss on the brunette's forehead and chuckled deeply as she wiggled deeper into his embrace. "Leon thinks it's a good idea to send Reno to the cabin in their place."

"Is this Cloud being stubborn and Leon going along for the ride because he doesn't want to upset him, or is this a combined rejection?" Aerith asked curiously, internally marveling at how Leon would jump when Cloud said the word when it came to making sure that the blonde wasn't going to be upset about something. It was a very rare thing for Leon to care about other's thoughts and feelings in such a way, and such moments went generally underappreciated by the masses for the most part since pretty much anyone who knew about it was related to them in some way, shape, or form.

"Option A." Zack responded with a hearty laugh. "We've always known that Cloud has been pulling the strings from pretty much the day they met. He likes to let Leon think that he's making some decisions from time to time, but we all know who _really_ wears the pants over there."

Aerith nodded her agreement. "I love you, Zack."

"I love you, too, Sweetheart."

* * *

"Truce?"

Cloud stared at Reno's outstretched hand in a mixture of wariness, disbelief, and hope before reaching out to tentatively shake it. "What's gotten into you?"

The red-head shrugged as he blatantly ignored the stares of their classmates and Professor Highwind, retracting his hand and smiling. "Nothing really. I just didn't think that the garage would survive if we were to upgrade to full-scale war… And to be completely truthful, Sephiroth probably deserved to be hit for doing that without your permission."

Cloud blinked in surprise. "I never thought I would see the day when you wouldn't leap to defend that bastard. I'm impressed."

"Hey, I did a little thinking, yo, and, while I still think you should give the guy a chance, he was quite a bit forward with the whole deal and I'd probably react almost the same way as you if he did the same to me, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for know." Reno shrugged easily, his lanky frame easing into a more relaxed position. "This doesn't mean that I'm not going to pick on you or anything, 'cause I am, but it does mean that I'll stop pushing, kay?"

"Hell, that's a whole fucking lot more than I thought I was going to get out of you. I'll take it." Cloud grinned then, the first true bit of happiness he'd shown where Reno was concerned for months, and the red-head suddenly felt as though he had finally done something good. "And I guess we can call a truce for the time being."

"Fuck… This is where you say that we're still going to have to talk about this or something, isn't it?" Reno groaned and Cloud winced.

"As much as I don't _want_ to talk about it, I think we're going to have to." Cloud rolled his shoulders back in annoyance. "Fuckin' hell I hate having conversations."

"Fuckin' A." Reno agreed as they both made their way through the stunned crowds and back to an abandoned workbench to sort out the tools they were going to need for that night's lesson. "Wanna race to see who can rebuild their transmission first?"

"Hell yes I do!"

* * *

"Wow… You think you know a relationship's dynamic down to a T and then they go and change everything up on you." Zexion murmured to himself as he stretched his arms over his head and settled down deeper into the hard-backed library chair. They had just gotten back from spying on Professor Highwind's nine o'clock mechanics class, and they had been very disappointed. Out of everyone, they wouldn't have pegged Reno as the one most likely to back off and think about what was going on instead of just blindly reacting.

Demyx rested his arms on the table and then placed his chin on them as he contemplated the dark shelves full of book in front of him. "I don't know whether I'm relieved that no one died, or that I'm disappointed Cloud didn't give a repeat performance of his formidable right hook."

"You are not going to share the information we gathered after the party with Tifa's group, are you?" Zexion asked after a moment of silence.

"Concerned for his feelings, are you?" Demyx asked sarcastically and Zexion frowned and refused to meet the musician's eye because, damn it, Demyx was right and that irked him to no end. Back in the day, the schemer wouldn't have thought twice about ruining someone's life in such a way, but now he did and that was fucking with his mind in a way that he hated… And Demyx _knew_ damn it.

"You would not do such a thing." Zexion decided to go with the safer answer to his lover's question. He paused for a second. "You would not do such a thing."

"Repeating it isn't going to make it true." Demyx muttered sadly. "You're right, I wouldn't have done such a thing a few months ago, but I wasn't all in then. You know me. Once I'm committed, I'm committed to the bitter end. It's part of what you love about me."

"You know me as well." Zexion responded slowly, measuring his words as though the recipe of his thoughts was going to come undone if he didn't phrase them just right. "You also know that I feel as though I am to blame for your change of mind and that I am wishing I had left you alone two years ago and had never fallen in love with you because to corrupt your magnificent spirit is slowing crushing me inside and making me re-evaluate everything I thought I knew."

Demyx nodded. "And _you_ know that I'm not going to go anywhere because of that and in a few days you're going to work your way through your guilt only to find something else to torment yourself over because you apparently can't function without your own mental adversity."

"You are picking up some rather large words, my love."

"A side effect of living with a tight-assed bookworm, I assure you." Demyx was grinning a bit now as he lifted his chin up from off of his arms. "I love you Zexy, that's not going to change, and there's nothing for you to be guilty about. I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do."

"I know that." Zexion sounded calmer, if a little frustrated still. "You are going to have to bear with me, however. This is a lot for someone like me to adjust to."

"Understandable." Demyx sighed and tilted his chair onto its back legs because he was bored and enjoyed moving more than sitting still. "I guess I'm setting myself up to be public enemy number two in the Strife-Leonhart clan's view, huh?"

"Yes, I would say so." Zexion responded as he fiddled with his bangs, a habit he hadn't had before meeting the musician, and one that told more about how stressed out he really was than anything else. "Wait… I do believe the expression is 'public enemy number one' if I recall correctly."

Demyx chuckled. "True, but I don't think there's anyone alive or dead that can replace Sephiroth in that position for the time being, so I'll just take the number two spot and hope that they never fully extract revenge from enemy number one so that I can continue living."

"Sound plan."

"I try."

* * *

_**A/N: **So heres to fingers crossed for the next chapter actually showing up on the fourteenth!_


	12. Day OneHundredSeventy: This is too much

_**A/N: **Cookies for Creative Spark for noticing that Demyx said he was going to find out what happened TWO years ago not four... Very, very sharp eye! Well, this is the chapter where you'll find out exactly what it was that happened two years ago. Go you for catching that though!_

_Sorry it's late... I went out of town for my b-day and didn't get a chance to work on this even though I really wanted to, and then didn't have Internet to put it up once it was done. So I'm staying up late tonight to make sure that I get it up now and not later and so some of you get the joy of waking up to find an update! BWAH!_

_Also... I know that I have horrendous run-on sentences and I abuse commas to the point where I think they are planning a rebellion upon my very soul, but I'm trying to cut down, really I am... Please bear with me on the bad grammer front for just a bit longer... God I fail at thinking in coherent English. I'm sorry inventors of the English language! I'm butchering it horribly and I would like to stop now!_

**

* * *

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**Chapter Nine**

_**Day One-Hundred and Seventy: I Fucking Love You, Okay?**_

"It's pink."

"Yes, Sora, pink is the generally accepted color with which to decorate on Valentine's Day."

"But, Kairi… It's _pink_."

"Indeed it is. Shut up and put it on."

"I'm a guy."

"I know this. You're also a very stubborn guy that's just about to get on my last nerve."

"I'm not _gay_."

"I never said you were… Today… Look, put the damn tie on right this second and I won't maim you too much, okay?"

Sora paled a bit, but he took the offending tie and begin to secure it around his neck none the less. Kairi was a force to be reckoned with when it came to Valentine's Day.

"There you go." Kairi cooed as she reached out to straighten the lapels on the white short-sleeved button up she had forced the brunette into not even five minutes previous. "I don't see what you were fussing about. That wasn't really so bad, was it?"

"It was torture… Still is come to think of it." Sora pulled away from Kairi's reaching hands and gave her a stern look to fend off any other ideas she might have been getting. "Why are you here anyways? Shouldn't you be fawning over Zell and coercing him into giving you expensive presents he really can't afford because you're a conniving wench like that?"

"I have all day to wheedle expensive gifts out of my boyfriend. I don't have all day to make sure you look at least presentable." Kairi answered as she looked him over from head to toe. "I wish you would have let me find you a pair of jeans that didn't have a hole in the knee, but all in all I think my job here is complete."

"I love you, Kairi, I really do, and you are my best friend in the whole, wide world, but I don't see what you have to be fussing over. It's not like I'm trying to impress anyone." Sora sank down onto his bed and grabbed his bookbag, fully intending to make sure that he had everything he would need to make it through his day. "In fact, I can't remember the last time I had a girlfriend on Valentine's Day. Hell, I can't remember the last time I had a prospect for a _date_ on Valentine's Day. It's not like something special is going to happen…. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Oh, Sora, you're so silly." Kairi giggled as she watched her friend's changing facial expressions as he finally started to put two and two together to find out that it had always made four after all and that he had been an idiot for thinking otherwise. "Of course you have someone to impress today."

"You and Riku are planning something and I want to know what it is now while I can still get out of it." Sora responded sternly, not amused in the slightest (and slightly panicked if all truths were to be told) with the thought that Kairi was apparently about to offer him up on a silver platter to the one man he'd sworn he'd never date for what had to have been the tenth time that year alone.

"Why is it that I can't make my very best friend look halfway decent on the most romantic day of the year? Do I really have to have an ulterior motive to expend some of my feminine energy on the only of my male friends secure enough in his own masculinity to accept it?" Kairi was very good at putting on the most innocent, most childishly hopeful face Sora had ever seen. Of course, Sora had seen this face quite a lot over the course of the time he had known the little imp and thus was not as affected as Kairi would have hoped.

"Of course you do, and you wouldn't think to do this on your own either, so that means there is someone with an even bigger scheme behind you." Sora shook his head in dismay. "And, as much as I would like to think differently, there is only one person out there that you would care enough about to want to help set me up. He's also the only person who would think to ask."

"Oh poo. I hate it when you get all intuitive." Kairi pouted. "You ruin all my fun. Yes, Riku told me to make sure you at least looked presentable today, but no, I don't know what he's planning on doing and I wouldn't tell you even if I did know. I'm on Riku's side of this, just like the rest of the goddamned world, so you might as well jump on this bandwagon at the next station so we can stop dragging you along behind us."

"Kairi…" Sora pleaded. "I really don't want to go into this again today. Isn't it enough that I don't _want_ to date him?"

"Yeah, and that would so totally work, too… If I didn't know that you really _do_ want to date him." Kairi sighed and took up a spot on the bed next to her friend. "Face it, Sora, you're my best friend and you tell me everything. You're not seriously thinking that I would be so heartless as to forget the things you tell me in confidence. I'd be a crappy friend, now wouldn't I?"

"Sometimes I half wish you _were_ a crappy friend, at least where _that_ is concerned." Sora tossed his bag unceremoniously to the floor and flopped back onto his back with his arms pillowed under his head. "How many times am I going to have to go through all the reasons why I don't think this is a good idea?"

"Until you see that you're pretty much spewing a load of bullshit every time you do." Kairi chirped cheerfully. "Riku's not going to break your heart, I would think that the almost five years he's spent doggedly pursuing you would have told you that by now. Also, I highly doubt you're the kind of person to give up on a friendship just because something went wrong, and I know Riku would be insulted if he knew you thought he would do it either."

"That's not the only thing…"

"Your family only wants for you to happy." Kairi cut in, not bothering to listen to Sora's complaints since she really had heard them all several times over the past few years. "They all like Riku and have come to accept the fact that he's a good kid that's going to take care of you the way you deserve to be taken care of. You aren't breaking your mother's heart here either. What else is there that you've had objections to? Oh, right. He's in fucking _love_ with you, you idiot! That's not a _bad_ thing no matter how much you are trying to convince yourself that it is."

"But what if I'm not in love with him?"

From the look on Kairi's face, he knew he'd just said something incredibly stupid, and the funny thing was that he knew exactly how completely brainless he had been for even _thinking_ to say it. Kairi knew that it was a lie. Sora knew that it was a lie. Hell, blind dogs in India knew that it was a lie. The only one not in on the great secret that was Sora's hidden love for Riku was the silver-haired vixen himself and that was only because five years of hearing 'no' had a way of sticking in one's mind despite your better struggles against it.

"I think you know exactly what I have to say to that." Kairi answered carefully, clearly disappointed in the way her friend was too damn cowardly to suck it up and admit that he was in love with an absolutely amazing person and just get over it already. Sora nodded glumly, focusing more on the ceiling than on Kairi at the moment. "Now, we've discussed this a hundred thousand times and I feel as though we're going to have to discuss it a hundred thousand more before the end of these shenanigans, but that's not going to change the fact that you are in love with your best friend and there are much worse ways to find a life partner than by being friends with them since you were old enough to understand long division."

"When did this happen to me?" Sora rolled over and buried his face in his comforter and kicked at the edge of the bed ineffectually.

"Probably the day you punched his brother in the face because he insulted Cloud and Riku laughed and helped you chase him away." Kairi smiled fondly at the old memory. "There's not a lot of people who would go against their own flesh and blood in order to protect Cloud's feelings, and the ones that do always seem to make their way into your life whether you want them to or not."

Sora grunted but didn't make a move to roll over. Kairi had been right, but it hadn't really been all about Cloud that day, though his older brother'd had a lot to do with it. Riku was different than all the other people Sora knew. Riku truly cared about those that needing caring about, with no questions, no reservations, and definitely no second thoughts. He would rather die than see someone he cared about (or someone that someone he loved cared about) in pain or uncomfortable. That was just the way he was.

And, damn it all, Sora was in love with the fucking bastard and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

* * *

Across campus in another dorm, Sora's twin was having a much more enjoyable morning than he had been having. In fact, considering Roxas was naked and slightly sweaty with a goofy grin that only one person on earth was allowed to see on his face, it could be said that his morning going far beyond merely enjoyable, having crossed over into fucking amazing territory long ago.

"Happy Valentine's Day, love." Axel murmured into one creamy shoulder as his tightened his grip on his lover's waist.

"Hm." Roxas hummed and rolled over so that he could use Axel's surprisingly broad chest as a pillow in lieu of actually searching for his. "I would hope that it wouldn't have to be Valentine's Day for me to receive such a spectacular wake-up call."

Axel chuckled lightly, running a gentle hand up and down Roxas' back lazily. "Of course not, my love. You have full access to my body and all its pleasurable charms any day of the week and you know it."

"Good." Roxas yawned and snuggled deeper into Axel's warn embrace. "We're going to have to go to class in a few minutes."

"I was hoping that you would consent to playing hooky with me on this, the most romantic day of the year." Axel suggested slyly, knowing that Roxas would never go for such a deal, and loving him for it anyway. "Too much to ask for?"

"Too much to ask for." Roxas agreed as he pulled himself up into a sitting position and stretched, watching with a slight smirk as Axel's sparkling emerald eyes ran from where the blankets were pooled in his lap all the way up to his face. The blonde sighed and relaxed back against the headboard. "I've got a project due in my Advanced Physics class and I'm behind on it as it is. Tonight we'll have all the time in the world, though. Does that sound like a good plan to you?"

"Anything that involves you in any state of undress sounds like a good plan to me." Axel teased with an evil smile to show that he was very pleased with the thought of having a horny Roxas all to himself for one night. "By the way, I promised Riku that I would help him lock Sora in the theater later tonight so it might take me awhile to find you after class."

Roxas couldn't help but laugh at that. "You think it's going to work this year?"

"I certainly hope so." Axel shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. "Poor Riku's been waiting for long enough. What is it with your family and being a stubborn lot of idiots? You excepted of course… It only took you _two_ years to figure out that it was easier to love me than fight me."

"Would have been shorter had you not attempted to blow up my mother's dogs and then ran over Leon's cat within a month." Roxas pointed out as he tried to gather up enough energy to get out of the bed and get dressed. "It also would have been much longer if you hadn't apologized and then wrote me that sappy poem."

"You liked the poem?" Axel asked and raised an eyebrow in amusement.

"If you tell anyone, I swear to whatever god is listening in on us today that I will snap your neck in two before you can finish the sentence." Roxas threatened, but it was a weak threat and they both knew it. The little blonde was far too used to Axel's idiocy to truly care much. "By the way, Mom told me to ask you something."

Axel perked up at that and finally rose into a sitting position. "She did? Should I be scared?"

"I don't think so…" Roxas said after a moment of hesitation. "She wanted to know if you could come over and help her move some furniture around for her or something. I offered to come over and do it myself, but she insisted that you would be more than enough and that I needed some time to spend on my studies and shouldn't be concerning myself with things like where the sofa should go."

"…Are you _sure_ I shouldn't be scared?"

Roxas blew out a fast stream of air and ran his hand through his blonde spikes. "I'm pretty sure. She has been nice to you for the past month or so. Maybe she's finally decided that she's willing to draw a truce. With all the shit that's been going on around here she might have realized that life's too short for petty dislikes. I don't know where anyone stands anymore."

Axel nodded and flexed his fingers in frustration. "I guess I'll call her and tell her I'm free… Fuck, we're not supposed to be talking about serious issues today. We're supposed to be exchanging words of fluffy nonsense and having hot sex."

"We already had hot sex." Roxas pointed out. "And if you want to exchange words of fluffy nonsense, you might want to find yourself another boyfriend because I love you, but I don't love you _that_ much."

"Bully…"

* * *

"See, _that's_ the way he should have gone about things." Zack scratched the back of his head idly as he watched Riku meander through the aisles of electric pink candy boxes. "If Sephiroth had been anything at all like his younger brother, then we wouldn't be having any kind of fucking problem right now."

Aerith nodded sadly as she fingered a wilting lily off to her left. "It's not even the patience aspect of it all, though Riku has more patience than anyone I think I have ever met. It's the love. Riku loves Sora so much that he's willing to pull back every single time. He knows how Sora feels. He knows that there's only a very thin wall and that it would be so easy to just smash it away and take what he wanted, but he won't do it. He won't do it because he loves to Sora too much to and he wants Sora to come to him of his own free will, not because he was forced to."

"Two very different brothers wanting much the same thing, only one of them went insane in an effort to get it and ended up ruining everything and the other didn't." Zack removed his hand from the nape of his neck in favor of rubbing it over his eyes instead. "Thin lines and different paths are the only things that set them apart, but they have never been so far away from each other."

"Never let it be said that you can't have moments of stunning insight, dear." Aerith quipped and suppressed a giggle at the mock hurt on her husband's face. "In any case, there is absolutely nothing we can do with the elder brother. He's messed everything up far beyond repair, but we can help Riku. Five years of patiently waiting should have earned him _something_."

"Agreed." Zack picked up a vase of roses and offered them to his wife for her inspection. "You think Cloud and Leon are having a happy 'day of mass produced love crap,' as Cloud so eloquently put it on the phone last night?"

"I think I could care less if Cloud Strife dropped off the face of the earth at this moment in time." Aerith responded as she placed the vase and its roses back where Zack had found it. "He's being an asshole again… Not wanting to help us out in our time of need and then calling to rub it in. Bastard."

"You have been hanging around my family for far too long if you're going to continue peppering curse words into everything you say that has something to do with Cloud, Leon, or the Relationship That Never Was." Zack pointed out as he glanced at a price tag on a white teddy bear that was holding a box of candy hearts. "Not that it's a bad thing. I'd probably be more worried if you didn't since they tend to be a force that would drive a saint to drop the f-bomb a time or two, but I don't think this is healthy for you."

"I highly doubt anything about them or those who surround them could be taken as healthy, but I see your point." Aerith conceded as she held out a stuffed frog with a crown that made kissing noises when you squeezed it. "Think Sora would like this?"

"Not at all." Zack answered and took the frog from his wife in order to stuff it behind a book of sappy love poems some idiot or another had composed about flowers or some shit. "Where'd Riku go anyways?"

Aerith shrugged. "Somewhere in the candy aisle, which, good idea on his part. Sora loves candy more than the son of a dentist on Halloween."

"Odd metaphor, but I'll go with because I love you sweetheart." Zack probably would have been hit for saying that (as he should have been), but Riku chose that moment to hurry over to the couple with his arms loaded down with all kinds of pink, red, and white candy boxes.

"Okay, so I think I have enough to at least get him to stand still and listen to me for a minute or two this time." Riku frowned down at the pile of processed sugar in his arms.

"Honey, if he eats even a forth of that then you're never going to get him to stand still again." Aerith reached out to take some of the boxes on top of the pile and placed them on a nearby shelf. "There you go. We don't want to poor thing to fall over dead from hyperglycemia, do we?"

"No…." Now Riku was looking a bit sheepish. "Do you think that this whole plan is little on the unrealistic side? I mean… He's made it pretty clear that he doesn't want anything to do with me where anything beyond simple friendship is concerned."

"Don't give up." Surprisingly enough, it was Zack that jumped to boost Riku's flagging confidence. "You love him, and that's more than enough reason for you to prove it to him until he gets it through his thick skull that you aren't something that is going to let this it rest on non-answers and avoidance."

Riku's aquamarine eyes glittered with his own brand of optimism once more. "Yeah, thanks, Zack. I guess I just needed to hear it from someone who's not me or Axel you know. I'm going to get there someday and when that happens it's going to be amazing."

And the happily married couple could do no more than exchange knowing looks and soft smiles because, even though he didn't know it yet, Riku was already there.

* * *

"I would just like for you to know that you are an asshole of epic proportions." Cloud Strife did not look happy at all. Of course, he very rarely did, but for all intents and purposes he was looking especially not happy on this particular day. "Everyone's going to be off with their significant others and we'll finally have a chance to spend some alone time together and you're going out."

"Trust me, I would like very much to stay here and have alone time with you, but I promised someone that I would help them today and I'd be an even bigger asshole if I stood them up to have sex with you when I've got pretty much the rest of my life to do that." Leon groused as he rifled through his bag in search of his car keys. "Look, I should be back before dark. We can do whatever you want then."

"But that's going to be hours away!" Cloud protested. "I'm impatient. I don't think I can wait that long."

"Well, if you hadn't gotten up early and gone running without trying to wake me up then we would have had time to have sex _before_ I had to leave." Leon grinned triumphantly as he held up his missing keys. "And besides, shouldn't we have like progressed into something more meaningful than a relationship that relies on sex to function."

"We are two healthy twenty-three year old males who have been sexually active since the tender age of thirteen." Cloud said stubbornly. "If there comes a time when we _aren't_ thinking about having sex over doing something romantic that will end in sex anyways, then I think we need to be worrying about having a problem with our relationship."

"I'll give you that." Leon responded as he bent down to tie his shoes. "It's not going to make me change my mind, but it's something to think about while I drive into town."

"You are an asshole."

"You said that already. You really need to update your dictionary of insults." Leon chided as he straightened up and made his way to the door. "Are you going to follow me down so we can continue this immensely riveting conversation or are you going to throw me a bone this time around and let me leave without you throwing a hissy fit?"

"I'll show you a bone…" Cloud growled out threateningly.

"You have a left hand to take care of that, dear." Leon quickly strode out the door in order to not be mauled to death by an angry Cloud and took off running down the hall, angry blonde on his heels.

Eventually, Leon reached his car and Cloud dropped back to let him go, realizing that the faster Leon left, the faster he would be home, and the sooner Cloud could kill him for being a sarcastic jerkface. That didn't stop him from shooting his middle finger up in the air as a form of salute as he pulled out of the parking lot though.

"That's not nice. I'm sure he deserved it for something, but it's still not nice." Cloud bit back a heavy sigh as he recognized the voice of his little brother.

"Sora, you know that he deserves anything and everything that comes his way, if not for something he did right then, then for something he's going to do soon enough." Cloud explained. "And besides, he insulted me. I know that's not cause for alarm for the most part, but it's always worth it for me."

"And you two have been living together without killing each other for _how_ long?" Sora shook his head in weary disbelief. "If I hadn't been around to witness the rare moments when you two get along, I would say that you were bitter enemies."

"Meh. Shit happens. What are you gonna do about it?" Cloud shrugged and fell into step with his brother as Sora turned to head off in the direction of the West Quad. He might as well follow Sora around since going back to the dorm right then would have been boring beyond belief. "You don't have a Saturday class do you?"

Sora shrugged one shoulder in order to get a better purchase for his bag's strap. "No, but I was planning on going to the library for a while to study. I've got a test on Monday because Professor Merlin is an asshole who hates my very soul."

"That's boring. Shouldn't you be off somewhere with Riku trying to deny your undying love for him?" Cloud inquired and then quickly dodged the flying hand that had come his way because of his innocent question.

"Shouldn't you be off somewhere far from me, preferably killing yourself before you piss someone off enough that they don't bother to hesitate before blowing your brains out?" Sora grumbled back, already angry from Kairi's ambush without having his older brother jump in on him as well. "Honestly, brother, you'd be doing the world a favor."

"Wow, I always knew you were jealous of me, but I didn't think it had gotten to the point where you fantasized a life without me." Cloud put a hand over his heart and looked up at the sky in mock pain. "I suppose when you put it that way, there really is nothing else I can do but obey. I'd like for you to know that I am doing this purely for your sake and that I would dedicate myself to you in such a way because I have nothing but the utmost love and respect for you."

"There are times when I wonder why anyone would be surprised by your stunning displays of self-centeredness, and then I remember that this is _you_ I'm thinking about and just don't bother thinking at all." Sora responded flatly as he quickened his pace in hopes of losing his brother. As much as he loved Cloud and would be willing to fight to the death for him, he still didn't want to deal with a bored Cloud when he had a test to study for in a subject that neither of them were good at.

"You're trying to get rid of me." And anyone who said that Roxas was the only one capable of reading his mind because of that stupid twin thing everyone believed existed could just go jump off a cliff in Sora's opinion.

"Of course I'm trying to get rid of you. You're annoying and I want to study." Sora hitched his bag up higher on his shoulder and lengthened his stride even more. Cloud matched him step for step and Sora bit back the sudden urge to groan. "Seriously… I'm not going to get to do it tonight and tomorrow I already promised Naminé that I would take her to her aunt's since her car's in the shop and Kairi is going to some family deal with Zell."

"Sounds like a personal problem." Was Cloud's only response as Sora sighed and slowed down in order to debate as to whether it was really worth it to walk all the way to the library when he obviously wasn't going to be able to get any of his work done like he would have liked.

"It should be a personal problem, yes, only your unwillingness to listen to my wishes makes it a more public problem." Sora pointed out. "And I can't _make_ you go anywhere, twenty years of trying to do that has taught me not to bother with making an attempt. So I guess it's really your problem as well as mine now."

Cloud nodded in agreement but made no move to leave much to Sora's dismay. "So we're going to the Rec Center for a midmorning snack?"

"Oh for the love of… Fine, we can go get your damned snack." Sora conceded and changed his course for the opposite direction. "Then will you allow me to go to the library to study?"

"Nope."

And as much as Sora wanted to hit him and just make a break for it, he really did love his brother and so he followed along as Cloud took up the burden of setting the pace, wondering (as he often did) exactly why he cared so much about the one person related to him that never seemed to care back.

But hey, Cloud was blood (annoying blood, but blood none the less), and Sora was duty bond to not piss him off, so he settled in to enjoy his unexpected day of brotherly bonding with good grace and a slight smile.

He hadn't really wanted to study for that math test anyways…

* * *

"Do you know what they're doing for Valentine's Day?" Tifa asked as she took in the sight of the room full of girls (and Riku who had showed up at the last minute against his better judgment) who were all fidgeting in hopes that this meeting would be over with enough time for them to meet up with their own significant others.

"Absolutely nothing." Riku said from his perch on the armchair the closest to the door. "Neither one has a prospect for a date and Leon's been missing since this morning because he went to go help some mystery friend. Sora just texted me and begged me to save him from Cloud's evil clutches... Apparently Cloud is bored and has now made it his solemn mission in life to make sure that Sora can't study for Professor Merlin's math test on Monday."

"Sounds so predictable it's almost sad…" Kairi sighed. "What is it with these boys and shying away from romance?"

"They're _Cloud_ and _Leon_." Naminé pointed out. "If they didn't rebel against regular society in a way that still made them perfect in the eyes of the same society they were scorning then they just wouldn't be the same people and life would be boring."

"So we don't have to worry about someone horning in on them today?" Tifa asked hesitantly. "You guys do realize that if either one of them gets a girlfriend or a boyfriend before graduation then it's all over and we lose, right?"

"Yes, we're fully aware of that." Yuna responded as she tapped her foot impatiently against the carpet. "Can we go back to our dates now? I promised Tidus I would only be gone for half an hour and we're getting dangerously close to the forty-five minute mark right now."

"Leave if you'd like, but then you'll miss what it was that I managed to drag up about Cloud and Sephiroth." The whole room jumped and spun around to find Demyx leaning in the doorway.

"Fuck! How do you manage to _do_ that?" Selphie shrieked, more out of surprise than any actual animosity for the musician. "You have been spending _far_ too much time with your boyfriend if you've taken to sneaking up on people."

Demyx merely shrugged and lowered his lanky frame into the only empty chair that was situated as close to the middle of the room as one could get without actually being in the middle. "It might be a good thing for you guys that I _have_ been hanging out with Zexion a lot since it was _him_ that helped me find out what it was that you wanted to know."

"Demyx…" Riku was suddenly looking very uncomfortable. "I've been thinking about this and I don't think it's a good idea to be sharing Cloud's private matters with the whole world. I mean…. None of us would want our friends poking their noses in something we want to keep private after all."

"Normally, I think we would all agree with you, but this isn't a normal circumstance." Rikku cut in. "We _need_ to know what's going on so that we can do something about it. Sephiroth obviously doesn't have Cloud's best interest at heart here. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he's two seconds away from knocking the poor guy out, tossing him over his shoulder, and running off into the sunset like some kind of demented caveman."

"Yeah!" Selphie piped up from her corner and Kairi nodded solemnly beside her. "We need to know what we're dealing with here in order to keep Sephiroth under some semblance of control until Cloud is safely off the market. Then Seph won't have anything to fight for and will thus… Back off? Maybe?"

"I highly doubt that Cloud getting a boyfriend is going to stop Seph at this point." Riku grumbled, racking his brains for something, anything, that would get them off the topic of the horrible news that Demyx was waiting to share. How the musician found out something that no one had known but Cloud and Zack for the past four years was beyond him, all he knew was that it was something that needed to stay as much of a secret as it could, for Cloud's sake as much as anything.

"Well, I still think that we should listen to what Demyx has to say. He did go through a lot of trouble to find it out for us." Naminé's quiet voice rose up from out the sofa she was laying on. "Whether we do anything with the information after we get it is something that's we're not going to know until we know what it is he found."

Riku shifted in his chair, now really, really wishing he had listened to his first instinct that morning and had decided against going to the meeting. Maybe he could have been chilling somewhere with Axel without a care in the world, not knowing that Cloud's biggest secret was about to be told to a group of people he had thought were his friends… But then, if there was anything he could do to run damage control, he was going to do it.

"Hey, whatever it was, it was four years ago." Riku pointed out, hoping against all hope that the long lapse of time would make it seem that much more unimportant.

"Hold on there _one_ second…" Demyx smiled in a way that was meant to be comforting, but that came off as almost predatory and Riku couldn't help but get a sinking feeling deep in the pit of his stomach. Something was off here. "You didn't ask me to find out what happened between Cloud and Sephiroth _four_ years ago. You asked me to find out what happened between them _two_ years ago, and I did."

Riku was dumbstruck. He couldn't quite believe that Demyx had gotten his years mixed up… So if he wasn't talking about the rape… Then what _had_ he found out?

By the end of the meeting, Riku almost wished he had never heard of Cloud or Leon or all the drama that surrounded their seemingly normal lives before…

And he wasn't the only one.

* * *

"I would have thought you would have been shadowing Roxas mercilessly today not actually acting like a responsible human being." Axel looked up from where he was highlighting a passage in the novel he had been assigned to read for his English class as Leon walked up and actually took up the empty chair next to him. "I guess it comes as a pleasant surprise to find that I can be wrong from time to time."

"I thought you were going to be gone all day." Axel pointed out as he put his book down, not quite sure what to do with a Leon that wasn't being condescending and insulting. "If you're looking for Cloud he's somewhere in the Rec Center area driving Sora nuts and has been there for the past five hours."

"I'm not looking for Cloud. He can entertain himself without my help for a little while longer." Leon stated as he sat back and ran his eerily piercing grey-blue eyes over Axel's seemingly relaxed form. "I was hoping to run into you sans my younger brother for once, and lo and behold, here you and here I am, so let's talk."

"…Talk about what?" First it was Roxas saying that Mrs. Strife wanted to have a day all alone with him and now Leon was seeking him out to talk about something. Axel had just gotten used to the idea that he was never going to be the perfect match for Roxas and that he was going to have to resign himself to making do with whatever little bits of approval he could pry out of the Strife's fingers when they all had to go and change everything up all at once and now he didn't know where he stood anymore.

It was kind of making him dizzy.

"Life, the universe, everything." Leon shrugged lazily.

"Forty-two." Axel responded quickly and received a slight chuckled from Leon for his effort.

"Literary reference. I guess there is more to you then you let on." Axel marked his place in his novel and put it down gently on the table as he watched Leon warily. He knew better than others that sometimes when it seemed like you were scoring a point with Leon, you were actually setting yourself up for some kind of big, humiliating fall. "But, no I do not want to discuss the number forty-two and all its wonders. What I really want to discuss is Roxas… Or you in terms of dating Roxas I suppose would be a more descriptive way to put it."

Leon rested his elbows on the table and place his chin gently on his folded hands as he watched Axel squirm a bit in his seat. "How long _have_ you two been dating?"

"A little over two years." Axel answered automatically, instinctively recognizing Leon's angry father pose. He mentally shuddered at the thought of having to deal with Leon on a true fatherly basis and made a note to run like hell should the brunette break out a shotgun for a good 'cleaning'.

"That's a long time to be with one person." Leon mused. "And he seems to be fairly attached to you, so I guess that means there's _something_ about you that draws him above a physical level. Since I'm sure Mother wants to be the one to grill you about grades and your plans for the future, I guess I'm going to have to shoulder the burden of asking you of your intentions."

"My what..!?" Axel almost didn't know how to react other than the very immature squawk he had released at Leon's unexpected question.

"Your intentions towards my little brother. You know, where you see the both of yourselves in a few years after you've graduated and are ready to start out on your own careers and all that jazz." Leon waved his hand around in feigned disinterest. "Look, I know Roxas isn't really my brother and that I shouldn't have a say in his life, and when it comes down to it I really don't. He's going to do what he thinks is best for himself with or without my approval, but it bothers him that I don't like you. For the record: I don't like you, and I probably never will, but if it hurts Roxas to have me act like the world's biggest ass where you are concerned, then I guess I had better find some common ground with you and quickly because it's never my intention to hurt one of my family members, blood related or no."

"Wow… I never would have guessed that you would have put so much thought into what Roxas wanted." Axel was really and truly stunned.

"And here's where you make some Wizard of Oz parody about how I really did have a heart all along." Leon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "So down to business. Tell me about where you see yourself with my brother about five or so years down the road."

"Um… Still together hopefully, and I'm sure he'll be some rising big shot in some engineering firm because he's a genius like that." Axel was now very much wishing that Leon had offered up some form of multiple choice test for this part, having suddenly remembered that he was crap with discussion questions due to a tendency of his to ramble. "Hey, I just take it day by day, you know. I didn't expect to fall in love with him. It just kind of happened and, while it may have given me pause at first, now I thank my lucky stars that it ended up the way it did. He's an amazing young man, and to be quite honest, I really don't know what it is he sees in me. I'm loud, which he doesn't like. I'm an idiot, which he thinks is beneath him. And I don't tend to think things through, while he's analytical to the point where I want to strangle him at times."

"All in all, you guys may have the right idea. A relationship between the two of us shouldn't work, but it has and that's not something I am ever going to take lightly or treat carelessly."

Leon was quiet for a moment in order to think that over while Axel waited with bated breath, almost entirely convinced that he'd gone too far or said something incredibly stupid. That would be just like him, to ruin his only chance at finally getting some acceptance out of one of the only real obstacles standing in his way where Roxas was concerned and he had to go and blow it by not knowing when to shut up.

Axel cringed as the brunette abruptly got to his feet, motioning for the red-head to follow. Tucking his book safely inside his jacket, Axel rose up a bit slower and proceeded to follow Leon as he strode off down a path leading towards where the engineering buildings were clustered together. So they were going to see Roxas? Oh boy, not only did Axel say something stupid, but now he was going to be drug in front of his boyfriend where Leon would then continue on to point and ridicule (and possibly laugh at) the poor red-head until Roxas took pity on him and walked him back to the dorm to be able to properly lick his wounds and prepare for the second round which would undoubtedly come in the morning because, damn it, Leon never could let a subject drop when he would still wring a few last drops of torture out of it.

What it was that Leon had planned once they reached the building where Roxas would be about to get out of class was something that Axel was never to know because, sadly enough, they never made it there…

* * *

"Roxas! Save me!" Sora's was near to tears by the time he caught sight of his twin making his way through the Rec Center in search of a snack before he went looking for his wayward boyfriend. Of course, Sora had been dealing with a bored out of his mind Cloud for more hours than healthy for any sane person and the tears were warranted and very nearly necessary.

Roxas, on the other hand, was not one to be swayed by tears, and once he caught sight of the enthusiastically waving Cloud, he spun on his heel and did an about face, right into Riku's chest, bouncing off the taller boy and right into Sora's frantically clutching arms. Had he not known better, he would have even ventured to say that Riku had been put there on purpose for the sole reason of making sure that he wouldn't be allowed to leave Sora to suffer a hyperactive Cloud on his own for much longer.

"He's been following me _all_ day!" Sora tightened his grip on his twin as he felt the younger one starting to struggle for freedom. "I tried to go to the library, but he followed me in and then ended up getting us thrown out by turning on the music in his phone. Then I tried to go back to the dorm, but he stole my key and sold it to Yuffie for five munny. He wouldn't stop singing 'The Song That Never Ends' until I agreed to go to the Rec Center with him so he could get his fifth snack of the day and then attempted to blow straw trash at everyone at the tables around us until they all went away screaming, and then said I wasn't allowed to leave him until Leon showed up because campus is boring when he doesn't have a family member to torment."

"He won't leave me alone and it's driving me insane!"

"I'm standing right here, you know." Cloud pointed out from where he was watching Sora attempt to strangle the life out of his brother with a calm expression of boredom on his face. "And you really could have left at any time. I told you I wasn't going to follow you if you went into the West Quad. The cheerleaders practice over there at this time and Yuffie likes to try and make me join in because she's an evil she-demon."

"And run the risk of her making _me_ do some stupid flip in your place?" Sora was still on the verge of hysterical, but he released his twin enough so that Roxas was capable of breathing now. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, indeed I would, but you apparently don't seem to care what it is that I would or wouldn't like because you wouldn't go over there." Cloud shrugged one shoulder lazily. One would think that after years of winding Sora up into a frothing nervous wreck, it would get old, but one would be wrong, Cloud thought to himself. It was just as entertaining as always. The only thing missing was Leon to join in the pain… Which raised an excellent question in the blonde's opinion…

"Where _is_ Leon?"

All eyes were now turned on Cloud as opposed to Roxas' struggle to be free (and in Sora's confusion at Cloud's random statement, Roxas was released to stand on his own).

"I thought he would be with you to be honest." Riku was the first to regain his wits, seeing as his hadn't really been all that lost to begin with. "I'm sure that he's long finished with whatever it is that he was doing earlier and he had to have known that you would be wrecking havoc somewhere around here."

"Well, yes, I am good at wrecking havoc and drawing Leon's attention to me as a consequence to that havoc… And yet he is nowhere to be seen." Cloud rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "How very perplexing. It's not like him to be late to even unscheduled appointments."

"Where's Axel?"

Now it was Roxas' turn to be stared at and the young blonde ignored it in favor of continuing his thought. "He was supposed to meet me when I got out of class, but he wasn't there. I assumed he would be over here studying or something with people he knew, but I see that he's not."

"So we have two missing people?" Sora asked, more to himself than anything else considering he didn't really care where Leon or Axel were so long as they weren't bothering him. "Well, they aren't being missing in the same place or we would have heard about it… Or become witnesses to it… Axel and Leon can run pretty far when given the right motivations."

"You guys do know that they've invented this wonderful thing called a cell phone, right?" Riku cut in. "It's just like a phone you'd have at home for making calls, but this one can go with you wherever you are so that you can get in touch with other people whether they're home or not. Maybe you should start thinking about using it."

"And maybe you should start thinking about not patronizing me and I'll stop thinking about punching you so hard in the balls that they end up in your throat, okay?" Roxas growled out as he dug into his pocket for his cell phone, annoyed at himself that he hadn't thought of calling Axel before instead of assuming he'd be at the Rec Center where he usually was.

Before he could dial, however, Cloud's phone decided that it wanted to ring, and so Roxas held off making his call because the polite thing to do would be to allow his brother to answer it on the off-chance it would be important and something that Cloud would need to hear without someone most likely yelling in the background.

"Hello?" Cloud sounded confused as he made a gesture for those standing around him to be quiet. He hadn't recognized the number and the woman who had answered his hesitant greeting was unfamiliar to him as well. "Yes, I am Cloud Strife-Leonhart. Who exactly is this?"

There was a long silence in which Cloud's face suddenly fell and the color drained from out of it in a way that left him paler than anyone present had ever seen him. He murmured a few quick words into the phone and hung up, reaching out and grabbed Roxas' arm as he stuffed his phone back in the pocket where it belonged, promptly taking off in a dead run with Roxas dragging along behind him.

"It's Leon and Axel… There's been some kind of an accident…"

"They're in the hospital…"

* * *

They made record time. If Roxas hadn't been too busy wondering exactly what had happened and how badly injured Axel and Leon were then he probably would have been fearing for his own life throughout the whole speed limit defying mad dash on Cloud's bike all the way down to the hospital. There had even been a time when Cloud had barreled down a one way street instead of waiting for a light to turn green. It was a miracle they hadn't been pulled over or had been crushed to death themselves.

Cloud squealed into the parking lot and slid into a space as close to the door as he could get without being in a handicapped space and both boys vaulted off the backs of the motorcycle as though it were on fire, taking the steps leading up to the entrance two at a time in their hurry to find out what had happened. Neither one bothered to take the time to think about what they were doing or what might have happened, they were so intent on seeing what was _wrong_.

And when Sora and Riku came running in about twenty minute later they found that Roxas, at least, hadn't taken into consideration that he might not have been allowed to go back to wherever it was that they were keeping Axel if the way he was stalking through the waiting room glaring at anything and anyone to come into his path was any indication.

"How are they?" Sora asked as he skidded to a stop next to his twin and effectively put a stop to his pacing by standing in front of his. Roxas growled angrily in the back of his throat and ran a hand through his already extremely disheveled hair.

"I don't know. They won't _tell_ me anything." He grunted in frustration and would have taken up his pacing again had Riku not been blocking his other side. "All I know is that there was some kind of car accident, some dumbass speeding on campus, and that both Leon and Axel are hurt."

"I called Mom and she's on her way, so maybe she can convince someone to let you back. I'm sure Aerith will have a shift soon enough and then she'll let you do whatever you need to do." Sora pointed out reassuringly as he hugged his brother close to him, eyes scanning the waiting room for a sign of a brooding Cloud lurking around waiting for his first moment to sneak back and beat some answers out of the doctors. "Where's Cloud?"

"_He_ got to go back, and like the asshole he is, he hasn't come out here once to let me know what's going on." Roxas pulled out of Sora's comforting arms. "It was fucking insane, too. He just whirled in here and was just about ready to completely bypass the reception desk all together when the nurse intercepted us and asked us who we were here to see and all that junk they're supposed to ask. When she found out that neither of us were parent or married to Leon and Axel they wouldn't let us go anywhere."

"But you said that Cloud got to go back." Sora once more scanned the waiting room, wondering if he had just missed the sight of Cloud plotting murder.

"That's just it." Roxas made a tight fist at his side and grit his teeth together before continuing. "I don't know what he said to that nurse because he made me go stake out a good chair to wait in, but she changed her tune pretty quickly once my back was turned and the next thing I knew he was being shown through those fucking glass doors never to be seen again."

"Of course they let him back." The three boys jumped and Roxas nearly screamed (more because he was frustrated to the point of cracking than him actually being scared) to find Mrs. Strife standing there looking as calm and cool as ever. "He's got Leon's Medical Power of Attorney… And, since it seems as though he hasn't been back, I'm going to make the assumption that Leon is still unconscious and that they're making him fill out forms and make hard decisions."

"Mommy!" And with that loud exclamation Roxas launched himself on his mother, way too far gone from his normal state of mind to care that he was clinging to her like his was five all over again.

"Hi, my baby." Mrs. Strife cooed as she cradled her youngest to her chest, maneuvering the young man around so that she could fit Sora in there as well while Riku watched on uncomfortably, equally worried about both men that were lying injured somewhere in the hospital and concerned about the emotions of the boys not physically affected by whatever had happened but emotionally shattered none the less. "Cloud called me and he's already got most of it sorted out and organized, but we are going to have to wait until Aerith gets here to go back and see them. There's really nothing he can do about that, although from what I've gathered he's tried just about everything short of ritual torture to make it so that we can."

"What's _wrong_ with them?" Roxas asked tensely as he pulled back and Mrs. Strife released both of her boys, motioning for the to sit around her in a bank of chairs closer to the glass doors that led to the rest of the emergency room.

"They were hit by an idiot who was speeding through campus and skidded out of control. According to some witnesses, Axel was dead center in the path of the vehicle but Leon pushed him out of the way at the last second, probably saving his life in the process… From what I could pry out of Cloud before he had to go, it seems like Axel's got a few nice bruises, a concussion, and one hell of a twisted back, but Leon lost quite a bit of blood and has some internal injuries that he was going into surgery for. He hasn't been conscious since they loaded him into the ambulance and I'm pretty sure Cloud's about two seconds away from exploding between making sure Axel's doing okay and trying desperately to understand everything the doctor's have been telling him about Leon and what they need to do to make him better again."

"Cloud's doing all of that?" Roxas asked softly, more calm now that someone was explaining things to him that he was mere minute ago when he had been in the dark. "But why? I mean, I know why he's doing it for Leon. Leon's our brother, but he doesn't _like_ Axel. Why the hell does he _care_?"

"He doesn't have to like Axel to love _you_, Roxas." Mrs. Strife pointed out calmly while Sora and Riku nodded in the background. "Whether we like it or not, you've decided to bring Axel into our family and we trust you to know what you're doing for the most part. I know we haven't been the nicest about it, and I'm sure that we've caused you a fair amount of frustration, but he's family now like it or not, and that means that he's going to have to get used to Cloud and Leon getting horrendously protective of him when it seems like he's going to get hurt in some way."

And, as much as he wanted to, Roxas found that there was absolutely nothing he could find to object to that.

* * *

"This sucks…" Riku sighed and rested his chin in his hands as he slumped over in the plastic waiting room chair. Sora twitched off to his side and mirrored his movements. Roxas and Mrs. Strife had disappeared back into the previously off-limits depths of the emergency room not even five minutes ago and already Riku and Sora were more relaxed without their tense presence around.

"It sure does." Sora stuck his lower lip out in a pout. "Not that I want this to have ever happened, but on today of all days? That's like the worst time to worry your friends and family."

"You had plans or something?" Riku asked softly, torn between what he wanted and the depression he could feel creeping up on him now that the adrenaline of the ride to the hospital had worn off.

"Look, Riku…" Sora sighed and physically pulled himself together, hugging his knees to his chest and staring at the ground as though it were about to open up and deliver him from this suddenly awkward conversation. "You scare me, you know. I want to believe that you really love me, but there's always this stupid, little voice at the back of my head that says you're too good for me, and that you'd be much happier with someone else… So much so that I've got myself so damned scared that you're going to take off into the sunset and not even want to be my friend anymore if I so much as say one thing wrong…"

"And it's stupid." Sora went on quickly, sensing that Riku was about to interrupt and wanting to say everything he'd been keeping inside all in one go. "I know it's stupid, but that doesn't mean it's going to change. I've tried so hard to be the _normal_ one that I think I forgot who I really was there for a long time, and, sadly enough, I guess you kind of got caught up in the middle of it all without even an explanation to keep you hoping… But you didn't give up, and I've kept you waiting for so long that it's a miracle you haven't thrown up your hands and run away by now."

Sora shrugged, still refusing to look as his friend. "Maybe this whole thing has finally taught me my lesson. Leon and Axel didn't ask to be run over by an idiot when they woke up this morning. They didn't pencil in a hospital trip that they may or may not walk away from when they were going over their schedule for the day. Life isn't going to bother with asking us whether we're ready for it to be a bitch, it just is… So I was thinking that I've been waiting around for some insane sign to stop my idiotic fears for so long that I may have shortened whatever happiness I might have found with you substantially."

"And besides, it's not going to hurt either of us to try."

There was a long silence between the two, filled only by the hustle and bustle of those coming and going from the emergency waiting room, the intercom shouting random instructions in short intervals, and the squeak of a wheelchair being pushed down a far off hall.

"I guess Dr. Biggs is either important enough to be needed by several people at the same time, or he's passed out drunk in an empty room somewhere." Riku muttered after the fifth page for the doctor had come over the intercom system within a minute of each other.

Both boys looked at each other and then promptly burst out into hysterical laughter. Riku's joke hadn't been funny, and they weren't exactly in a place where laughter generally occurred, or in a situation where laughter was warranted, but they laughed all the same. There was just something about the absurdity of it all that hit them somewhere down deep on the inside. Here they were, sitting in a hospital waiting room while two people they cared about where seriously hurt not even fifty feet away on the other side of some walls, and they were discussing their romantic feelings and making sarcastic comments about the intercom's announcements.

It was too much for them to even consider thinking about and so laughter was the first thing that came to them and they rode it out until it's bitter end, eyes tearing up and hunched over grasping their stomachs while grieving and worried family and friends all around them sent them looks of death for interrupting the tense atmosphere.

"Sora…" Riku was the first one to get serious and the smaller brunette didn't even flinch when the silver-haired young man slipped an arm around his shoulders. "This isn't some kind of fling to me, or a conquest of some sort. I've loved you for a long time and I'm going to do everything I can to prove it to you if that's what you want for me to do, but I'm not going to give up on you, on us."

"I think a part of me has always known that." Sora sighed and buried his head into Riku's shoulder, trying his hardest not to just slump over into a lump on the floor and lay there until Leon and Axel could go home and life could go back to the way it always had been. "Like I said, I was so caught in up in preconceptions others were making of me that I didn't stop and take a moment to find out what it was that _I_ wanted."

"Just so you know…" Riku grinned a bit into Sora's brown spikes. "You've never been _normal_. You're a little more on the tamer side than Cloud and I don't think you have it in you to be as vicious as Leon or Roxas, but you're not normal. You're just as special as they are, they just tend to be a bit louder about their specialness than they really need to be."

Sora chuckled lightly. "They are loud, I'll give you that."

"Sora, _nuclear explosions _are more subtle than they are."

"True fucking story."

* * *

"How's Axel doing?" Sora asked as he handed his twin a cup of lukewarm coffee as his blonde twin finally made his way back into the waiting room.

Roxas shrugged. "He's awake now, but groggy from the drugs they gave him. He apologized for not picking me up from class like he was supposed to. Had he not been already beyond injured I probably would have punched him in the nose. It's not _his_ fault someone was a dickass idiot."

Riku let out a breath that he hadn't been aware of holding. "Well, at least he's acting fairly normal. Begging for your forgiveness is pretty much what I expected him to do."

"How's Leon?" Sora pressed on, sensing Roxas' hesitation to continue on.

"He just got out of surgery like ten minutes ago and they've got him hooked up to like fifty different machines." Roxas clenched his jaw and paused for a second before going on. "Mom's a nervous wreck she's so worried and Cloud… He just stands there looking out the window and refusing to say anything unless it's a doctor asking him a direct question about what he wants to do. It's kind of scary."

Riku and Sora were silent upon hearing that as Roxas sipped pensively at his cup of coffee, trying his hardest to come to terms with what was going on around him.

"When can we go in to see them?" Sora asked hesitantly, not knowing whether he really wanted to see his brother and friend drugged up or unconscious, but wanting to see for himself that they were okay, that they were going to get better.

"We can go visit Axel if you really want." Roxas muttered. "The only reason why Cloud and Mom haven't been forcibly removed from the ICU with Leon is because Cloud refuses to move. They seriously even tried to get security to throw him out… One guard now has ten stitches in his eyebrow and the other has two broken fingers and a black eye… They backed off at that point and left him alone since he apparently wasn't causing any trouble so long as they weren't asking him to leave."

"So let's go see Axel." Riku suggested, rightfully realizing that they probably didn't want to be around a stressed out Cloud and Mrs. Strife even if they were allowed to be. "He might not remember our visit in the morning because of the drugs but at least it'll feel like we're doing _something_ productive."

Roxas nodded and wobbled to his feet, leading the pair through the glass doors and into a sterile-looking hallway. They turned a few times into the more main part of the hospital and took an elevator up two floors, being deposited on a floor that looked less military and more hotel, trailing after Roxas as he turned another corner and stopped at a closed door about half-way down the hall."

"Room 386, the best room Cloud could get on short notice." Roxas shook his head as though trying to clear his thoughts. "I just don't _get_ it. I know that Mom said Cloud and Leon were pretty much accepting of Axel, but still... He went way out of his way to get a good room with a nice view while he was also trying to get Leon the best care he could under the circumstances… It's just not _Cloud_, you know."

"I think it's very much Cloud." Riku pointed out. "Your brother isn't exactly the kindest person on the face of the earth and he generally is more the type to sit back and let others take care of themselves, but not when they _can't_ take care of themselves. Even a dog that is low in the pack can rise up to help if something goes wrong with the alpha. Cloud's a dominant man that knew he couldn't compete with the other dominant men around him: Leon, Axel, Roxas… even you to an extent, Sora. But that doesn't mean that he can't step up to the plate to protect those he loves when they are in a situation where they can't do it like they normally would."

"Stop making painfully accurate analyses of my family and let's go see Axel." Sora rapped lightly on the door and then opened it, stepping back to allow Roxas to lead the way in.

"Hey, Roxy, I thought you were going to go spend some time with Sora and Riku." Axel laughed a bit before wincing and placing a bruised hand on his ribs. Roxas stepped out of the way so that the rest of the group could make their way in. "Oh, I guess I'm special enough to get to see them in person, huh? How'd you sneak them past Nurse Nazi out there?"

Roxas shrugged. "She wasn't out there. I'm sure she has other people to torment than you." The short blonde then turned to his friend and sibling and rolled his eyes. "There's a nurse out there that wouldn't let me go get you sooner saying that he was only allowed one visitor at a time. She also wouldn't let him get up to pee so now she's apparently the spawn of Hitler."

"She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and I think I heard her pronounce a 'w' with a 'v' sound." Axel shouted in his defense. "If that's not a Nazi in disguise, then I don't know what is!"

"Seriously, Axel? You just got hit by a fucking car not even three hours ago and you're already making up conspiracy theories about the hospital staff?" Sora asked incredulously, already knowing the answer, but kind of hoping that Axel would bother with refraining from doing something stupid for at least _four_ hours following serious head trauma.

"What do you expect me to do then?" Axel whined. "They won't let me sleep for more than two hours at a time because of the bump on my head. I've got to have something to do to take my mind off of the crippling boredom I can't sleep my way through. They don't even have basic cable here… Just some soap opera channel and a sports network."

"I would say that I would expect you play nice and behave yourself, but I know that would be asking for too much, so I won't." Roxas took up a spot on the bed as Riku and Sora moved a few chairs in the room to be closer to Axel.

"Roxas told me that Leon's still out of it." Axel started in on a touchy subject immediately after everyone got settled comfortably. "Is he going to be okay?"

"We hope so. You know about as much as we do at this point." Riku shrugged. "What were you two even _doing_ over there?"

"To be honest, I don't even know." Axel scrunched up his eyebrows in a deep thought gesture. "I was just sitting in the East Quad reading the novel we were assigned in English when Leon walked up to be and asked me what my intentions were concerning Roxas… I don't even know if he liked or disliked what I said because we didn't make it far enough for me to ask."

"Dude… Leon serious asked you about your intentions towards me?" Roxas asked, clearly surprised. "That's like beyond weird. Shouldn't Mom have been the one to do something like that?"

"I'm sure she was planning on doing it as well." Axel shrugged as best he could considering he was attached to a machine dripping pain medication into his system and his shoulder had a lovely road rash on it. "I think he just got there first. It's not that I _minded_ him asking me about it, it was more that I was surprised that he was actually bothering to get an honest answer out of me."

"He wasn't like interrupting you or asking you strange questions in which the only answer you could give would be a bad one?" Sora asked, not quite sure what to make of Leon acting like a civilized human being where Axel was concerned.

Axel shook his head slowly. "No, not at all. He was actually very polite and didn't interrupt once. I think I was too scared to really appreciate it at the moment, but it was kind of nice just talking to him like we were both normal human beings for once. I'm certain that once this whole accident shit is behind us and he goes back to the way he was before, it'll all go straight to hell in a hand basket and I'll be back to running for my life every other day, but until then I think I'm going to treasure the memory of Leon treating me like a person worth talking to."

"Wow…" Roxas and Sora both said at the same time, with Sora backing down so that Roxas could continue their thought without either Riku or Axel getting on their cases for having a twin connection again. "That's almost worth having someone follow Leon around with a camera for the rest of his life on the off chance that it might happen again."

"I don't think it's worth the hospital bills of all the camera men you're going to go through in the effort." Riku pointed out, with Axel nodding sagely in the background.

"So, Riku, anything worthwhile happen at today's meeting?" Axel asked amiably, not caring that Sora and Roxas were supposedly on the other side of the fence where the bet was concerned since they were too busy with school and life in general to really do anything to stop them. "Had I known that the alternative to going would be to get hit by a car, I think I would have chosen the squealing females from the get-go."

Suddenly Riku was very, very uncomfortable, and all the boys present knew it, which made him even more uncomfortable than he already had been. In fact, he was so uncomfortable with the situation that he kept flicking his eyes in the direction of the door as though he were calculating whether making a break for freedom would be successful and thus worth the effort… He found that there was too high a margin of failure, which only made him shift around in his seat nervously, confirming to those present that there was something about the meeting that he didn't want to share.

"Dude, just spit it out." Axel pressed. "If you know, then that means everyone else who was there knows and it's only a matter of time before one of them tells me, and then I'll go home and tell Roxas anyways, and so Sora will be able to pick it out of Roxas' mind the next time they get together with their twin telepathy and this whole thing will have been a waste of time."

"Nothing happened, really… I mean, it was stupid." Riku inhaled quickly and tried to run through a thousand different lies in his head at the same time, only succeeding in coming to the conclusion that Axel was right. Someone was bound to tell the red-head the truth sooner or later so it didn't really make sense to hold everything back right then, but damn it, Riku _hated_ being the bearer of bad news. "I'm pretty sure Demyx is full of shit anyways, so it's really not worth mentioning and all that jazz…"

"Whoa… Don't tell me that Demyx really found out?" Axel asked, now completely sure he didn't want to hear whatever it was that Riku had to say, but pretty much committed because of his insatiable curiosity anyways. "I mean, _really_? We didn't even know until Cloud decided to grace us with the truth when he was backed into a corner and vulnerable. How the hell would Demyx have managed to get the truth? Sephiroth doesn't strike me as the 'let me share my feelings and previous misdeeds with you' type."

"Oh, it's not about _that_, so Roxas and Sora you can stop plotting murder in the backs of your minds." Riku sighed deeply and waited until everyone's attention were on him once more before going on. "He didn't say that he was going to find out what happened four years ago if you'll remember correctly. He said that he was going to find out what happened _two_ years ago."

"But _nothing_ happened two years ago." Sora pointed out. "Unless you count them really starting to work through some of their issues and start talking more. I don't think that's a big deal though. In hindsight, I guess it kind of was, and I know I'm still pissed with Cloud for bothering to remain friends with that asshole… No offense, Riku."

"No offense taken. He _is_ an asshole."

"…But I don't think that qualifies as an event worth investigating or even bringing up." Sora finished up his thought and all attentions were turned back to where Riku was once more contemplating the exit.

"Um, well, apparently Cloud started talking to Sephiroth again two years ago against his better judgment because of something he found out… Something that Cloud didn't really want Leon to know, so he became friends with the asshole formerly known as my brother in an attempt to make sure Sephiroth never told Leon about it." Riku stopped there and began to stare at the ceiling as though someone had been nice enough to tape a cue card up there for him to read off of.

"Riku, what _was_ it?" Sora demanded, more scared than he had any right to be, and it was looking like Roxas and Axel were no less affected if there paler than usual complexions and tense expressions were anything to go by. "Did he threaten to tell Leon about the rape? Did he find out something about Mom that would have made Leon go all psycho about it?"

"No, nothing so simple…" Riku took one more deep breath and then just spit it all out at once in an attempt to just get it over and done with an out of his system.

"He knows who Leon's _real_ father is…"

* * *

_**A/N: **Holy fucking plot twist, Batman! So... The humor will come back for good sooner or later? I hope? Please... Damn you drama and your insaitable allure._


	13. Day OneHundredSeventyFive: Wakey, Wakey!

_**A/N: **So, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo... It has eaten my life. It has eaten it and spit it out, and then eaten it again for good measure. I guess that's what I get for working at a barn that turns out performance horses in Western Pleasure, Barrel Racing, and Pole Bending. Sad story. Fun story, but still sad because even though the next chapter is planned and outlined and all that good junk, it's probably not going to be written quite as quickly as I would like. This chapter has already befallen the dreadful rodeo vaccuum, and I hate to see the next one do the same, but the rodeo's got about another week on it and me and good, old Scout have got one more event coming up that we're preparing for._

_Good news: Taylor Swift on Friday! Woot! She's totally my girl crush at the moment. Were I not to have a boyfriend, and were I actually cool enough to hang out with her... Lol_

_Also, looking back a couple of chapters, I seem to recall that I offered up a contest of sorts... Something along the lines of reviewer seventy-five gets a one-shot of their choice... Well, I'm banking on getting at least five reviews for this chapter (at least I hope I will), so that number is looming closer. Good luck! ^_^_

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* * *

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**_Chapter Ten:_**

_**Day One-Hundred and Seventy-Five: Well, That was Special**_

Mid-morning on the fifth day since the accident found Cloud Strife still sitting in the same uncomfortable hospital chair he'd been in for five days straight, watching some crazy soap opera he'd become addicted to while still waiting for Leon to show some sign of wanting to wake up. Needless to say, it had been a pretty shitty five days and Cloud was about two seconds away from just screaming. In fact, focusing on the strange world of the soap opera was probably the only thing that was keeping him sane at that point.

Actually… That wasn't even doing too good of a job of it if all truths were to be told. He was pretty much beginning to get to the point where he was asking the characters questions and fully expecting them to give him a logical answer.

"Wait, so you would totally go away for three months on some kind of stupid ass 'come to Jesus' journey and when you come back your wife is just about three months pregnant, but is obviously much less because she hasn't even begun to show you dumbass and you _accept_ this? It's obviously Jason's baby you blind, retarded twat." Cloud shook his head in disbelief as the characters in the TV set refused to listen and take his advice once more. "Fuck, even your supposed _best friend_ knows."

"That's because Kevin is the morally secure 'trust everybody' type whole married Maria because he was in love with her despite her poor beginnings and Mexican immigrant family." Cloud would have jumped, should have jumped, but he was too tired to do much more than twitch as he heard Leon shifting around (_finally_) on the bed beside him. "It's his fault anyways. What kind of person disappears one day without telling his wife that he's leaving, where he's going, or when he's going to be back?"

"Maybe the same type of person that comes back early from a planned trip without telling anyone only to be knocked into a five day coma." Cloud steadfastly refused to look at Leon, knowing that he would probably collapse from exhaustion and stress should he choose to do so. "I know Donny was really only sneaking around in order to surprise his girlfriend, who was having an affair by the way, but it was still very inconsiderate of him."

"A five day coma you say?" Leon seemed to ponder this. "Well, he did recover at least, and I'm quite certain his girlfriend suddenly realized the meaning of her life and broke off the affair because she was really in love with Donny the whole time and was only following some misguided attempt to add a little fun to her life since Donny didn't seem to be wanting to settle down like she did."

"She dumped him and ran away with a cowboy fresh off the rodeo circuit." Cloud answered flatly, eyes still intensely focused on the TV screen.

"Well, then she was an idiot. I'm sure Donny had a lot to offer for her." Another pause. "I am Donny, right? I'm just trying to make sure I'm following this conversation correctly. I'm still a bit woozy, five day coma and all that you know."

"Damn it, Leon, you fucking scared me." Cloud growled out as he finally turned to look at his lover, who was staring at him hopefully, the machines still hooked up to his body painting the perfect picture of pity. Too bad Cloud knew that Leon was not someone who wanted to be pitied and that his bid for doing so was only because he was trying to diffuse Cloud's anger a bit. "I know it wasn't your fault, and that there really wasn't anything you could do to change the way things turned out… You saved Axel's life by the way… But that doesn't mean it didn't scare the ever living shit out of me."

"I'll say I'm sorry if that's what you're aiming for, but you know that I won't mean it." Leon pointed out as he rested gently against his pillows, eyes flitting around the room in order to better take in his surroundings. "Is this a private room…? With _live_ plants?"

Cloud shrugged. "You didn't get a say since you were unconscious, but I figured you wouldn't want to wake up in the ICU with people running all over the place and some stranger beeping next to you."

"So who did you torture to get this room?" Leon asked amiably, figuring that if Cloud hadn't hit him yet, then he wasn't about to do it now.

"Same male nurse I tortured to get Axel his room downstairs." Cloud smirked and settled back comfortably into his chair for the first time since he'd arrived at the hospital five days ago. "He was sexy by the way. Had he been a cowboy fresh off the circuit, I think you might have woken up to an unpleasant surprise."

"You hate horses."

"Wrong, I hate donkeys. Horses are different. I've never had one of _those_ break my foot before."

"Doesn't mean one wouldn't were you to give it the chance." Leon took another second to catch his bearings again. "Are we good now? Generally I would know, but the whole woozy thing is coming into play again… When did you decide to split up into four people?"

"Yesterday. It was a tough decision that I put a lot of thought into but I figured that four of me would make it much easier for me to handle everything. I hope that once the initial dizzy wears off you can come to accept this newest change." Cloud reached over and flicked at a button on the bedrail closest to him. "But, yes, we're good now that I've got the bad feelings off my chest."

Leon would have responded to that but he, unfortunately, was not lying about the wooziness or Cloud's sudden decision to split up into more than one person. Luckily for him, the arrival of a nurse put the pressure off of him to have a witty response and it wasn't long before he had been thoroughly looked over and given permission to be moved to a room that wasn't under constant supervision.

Well, he did find enough time to demand that Cloud be forcibly thrown into a shower if necessary because he was not going to smell like five day old ass so long as Leon was awake enough not to tolerate it any longer.

* * *

Axel woke up to the slightly muffled noise of a shower running somewhere off in the distance and a nurse that was arranging a package of medical stuff on a tray while humming quietly to herself. He also awoke to find that the curtains that separated his bed from the empty bed next to him had been half drawn and there was now the unmistakable form of another patient lying in it.

"Does Cloud know that they've moved somebody else in here?" Axel asked as the nurse stripped the plastic off one of her many instruments. The pretty blonde's eyes widened and she shot a quick glance in the direction of the now occupied bed behind her.

"Oh, God, I hope so." She seemed torn between needing to finish what she been sent in there to do (whatever _that_ was) and running away and hiding. "I just assumed he did, but what if he doesn't?"

"Then whoever was in charge of placing that poor innocent soul in here is going to disappear for a very long time and if he does manage to find his way back then there's not going to be enough of him left to make it worth it." Axel commented easily. There had been absolutely nothing to do for the past five days during the times when Roxas, Sora, Riku, or any other one of their friends weren't able to visit other than listen to the tales of Cloud and who it was in the hospital that he was torturing that day and why. "So what form of torture have I been prescribed for today?"

"We're going to be taking your catheter out." The nurse explained hesitantly. "Um, it's going to be kind of gross and I don't think it's going to feel very pleasant, but I'm pretty sure you're about ready to have that tube taken out of you once and for all… So much so that you're not going to hit me like you hit the night nurse when he put it in I would hope…"

"Hey, if a guy wants to be touching me below the belt he's going to have to take me to dinner first and quite possibly participate in a battle royal to the death with my current boyfriend." Axel gave the nurse a reassuring smirk. "Look, anything that's going to be taken out and _not_ put back in again at some point is a welcome change. Wanna take the needle in my hand while you're at it?"

"I don't think that I'm allowed to do that…." The nurse seemed to hover for a second as though she were insecure about how to proceed. "Are you sure you're not going to hit me… Or have one of your crazy blondes hit me for it later?"

"Only one of the blonde's belongs to me technically… Actually, I think I'm way past that to the point of belonging to him…." Axel pondered this for a minute, finding that he actually liked the thought of Roxas owning him and fighting for his honor, and then he imagined Riku's reaction to such an event and decided that being laughed at for years to come wouldn't have been worth it. "Just pull it out and get it over with."

"Yes, sir…" And she set about doing just that, quickly getting down to business in a way that belied her earlier hesitant personality, making Axel feel extremely uncomfortable even though he was also quite relieved that a plastic tube was no longer running right through a rather sensitive organ of his.

"Hm. So you really are a true redhead. Who knew?" Axel jumped. Luckily for him the nurse had already finished with what she had to do and had begun to re-cover the young man when Leon felt it necessary to voice his opinion on the scene he had apparently been silently watching. That didn't mean the she didn't jump either, and as she jumped the heel of her hand accidentally went down in a very sensitive place on Axel's anatomy, causing the poor boy to kind of choke on the scream that was already about to release.

Leon merely laughed.

"Fuck, Leon! Couldn't you have waited like two more seconds before being an asshole? Shit!" And then he suddenly realized exactly who he was yelling at and Axel did a double-take through his tears of pain. "Leon!? You're awake!"

"Of course I'm awake." Leon answered calmly as he reached for the remote that someone had left lying on the stand next to him. He flipped the TV on and turned his attentions to the soap opera channel, apparently not concerned at all with explaining his presence. "Now if you would kindly shut up, Kevin is about to find out that Maria's baby is actually Jason's and not his."

"You have _got_ to be kidding me." Axel mumbled as he wiped away some tears from the corner of his eye. "You get knocked out for five days straight and then first thing you do upon waking is get yourself involved in the drama of fictional characters on the most boring soap opera I think I have ever seen? _Really_?"

"It was Cloud's fault. Blame him." Leon shot back, eyes never once leaving the TV screen. "Now shut up before I _make_ you shut up."

The nurse beside Axel sighed and gathered together her equipment to throw away. Why was it that she was the one that ended up with the crazy patients? Oh right, she had _volunteered_ to cover this room because the men coming and going (and the patient himself in a lot of ways) were hot and she never could pass up the opportunity to stare at hot young men… Even if all of them _had_ turned out to be taken and gay…

Pondering why it was that she always fell into the trap of difficult patients, the nurse left the room, hoping that Axel recognizing the stranger in the next bed meant that an angry Cloud was not about to be breathing down her neck demanding answers. It was actually a very pressing concern.

"I fail to see how your new soap opera addiction is Cloud's fault since you technically haven't _seen_ him for five days." Axel continued on with the argument, still not quite believing that Leon was finally awake and completely capable of being his usual bitchy self. He probably would have pinched himself had he not still had residual pain from where the nurse had slammed right down onto his groin not even two minutes prior.

"You fail at a lot of things. You should be used to it." Leon responded automatically, still not looking over at where Axel was openly staring at him. "Honestly… Watching TV here. Generally when someone saves someone else's life, the least they could receive would be some consideration when they try and watch a show in peace."

"Well, forgive me for my complete and utter surprise that you're awake and not five seconds away from death on some 'Oh Shit It's Terminal' floor in this hellhole." Axel was now beginning to get a bit pissed at the way Leon didn't seem to care that there were other people out there worrying for him and hoping that he would get better. "And thanks for saving my life, you fucking asshole."

"You're welcome you fucking loudass." Leon grumbled. "Now will you please shut the hell up? Look, I even said 'please'. You should like be throwing a party or something. Granted I didn't say it very nicely and I really didn't mean it, but I think I should get _something_ for mentioning it."

"You get nothing for anything and everything you do just like always." It was now that Axel suddenly realized that the muted sounds of a shower running (that he had just assumed was coming from the next room where there was someone luckier than him who was allowed to get out of their bed without twenty nurses to help them) had stopped and Cloud was now standing in the room with a towel around his neck and wearing a new shirt and pair of jeans that someone must have brought for him to change into. "Okay, I'm clean now…. Does this mean that I'm allowed to watch TV again?"

"Against my better judgment, yes." Leon nodded his head in the direction of the chair that had been taken from Axel's side of the room and placed on the other side of Leon's bed sometime when Axel had been asleep. "I don't think you missed anything. Axel has been talking for the five or so minutes since I turned on the TV though, so I'm not really sure."

"Did you tell him to shut up?" Cloud asked as he made his way across the room to sit in the indicated chair, taking the remote from Leon and turning up the volume on the TV. "Did Missy find out that she has actually been dating her long-lost half brother of whom everyone thought was dead?"

"I did and she did." Leon answered as they both settled down as comfortably as possible. "She also decided that she loved him too much to let that stand in her way and now her father is out to kill her boyfriend because he thinks it's an unholy union."

"Sweet. Now all we need is some popcorn and a room where we're not being stared at by an idiot and I think my life can be complete." Cloud stated blandly as he shot Axel a look that quite clearly said if he were so much as to _think_ about opening his mouth then Cloud would make sure he had a very good reason to be staying in the hospital for the foreseeable future.

"My life would have been complete an hour ago before you fought the intern over whether you really did smell bad enough to warrant being pulled by your hair into a shower stall… The answer: Yes, yes you did and I was not about to sit here for a few hours while you were smelling like five-day-old ass." Cloud shot Leon a glare from out the corner of his eye, but chose not to comment on the scene he had apparently caused earlier that day. Axel continued to stare as a thought continued to dance around at the back of his brain.

"Since when have I ever cared about _your_ life and it's completeness? I've always been perfectly happy ignoring your problems for the most part." Cloud shot back and Axel totally had a vision of them sitting on a sofa somewhere in the dark reaching into a bowl that sat between them for popcorn while bickering back and forth for eternity as the stupid soap opera (that he was apparently now going to have to get used to) played on in the background.

And that was when the thought that had been swirling around in his brain since Cloud had announced his presence finally came out from the dark corner it had been hiding in and made a ninja-worthy leap into his subconscious where all other thought promptly shut down politely in order for Axel to deal with it.

They were acting exactly like his parents had when he had been a little kid and they had still loved each other enough that they actually bothered with working their problems out instead of turning them into screaming matches like they had when he was in high school right before the big 'D' word had started coming into play more and more.

In fact, if Axel really wanted to think about it for longer than a minute (which he didn't, but since it was either that or risk the wrath of Leon and Cloud for interrupting their soap, he ended up doing so anyways), then he would have to say that they were like pretty much any happily married couple he had ever met in the history of ever.

And that led to another thought (which two good thoughts in one day was something that he was starting to become a bit proud of)…

Leon and Cloud didn't just _want_ each other… They _loved_ each other…

And neither one knew it yet….

* * *

"I thought you said that Leon was awake and annoying you by refusing to move to another room?" Sora asked as he dragged the chair from next to the now empty bed on the other side of Axel's hospital room over to the currently occupied side.

"He is awake, and goddamn it all, he's still fucking annoying, but he had to go get some follow-up MRI or test thing and isn't here right now…. Which means Cloud isn't here right now…. Which means that I can tell Riku what I totally just found out like an hour ago without having to worrying about being mentally and physically destroyed sometime in the near future." Axel was excited. It wasn't often that he got to make covert observations and pass on his findings to people who were truly unknowing of the situation already.

It was awesome.

"Can Sora and I go then?" Roxas asked hopefully. If Axel didn't want Cloud and Leon knowing something, then that meant what he was about to say had something to do with the bet, and Roxas was pretty much over the bet. He didn't believe that his brothers secretly wanted a relationship with each other, but he was well past the point of caring enough to fight people over it.

"No! You must stay and bask in my genius!" Axel threw his hands up in the air in a supposedly dramatic gesture that only succeeded in his slamming one of his hands on the reading light positioned above his bed. "Ouch! They really shouldn't have those permanently mounted there. Someone more important than me could get hurt."

"At least you've come to accept that you're really not all that important to the function of society." Sora pointed out quickly. "It took you long enough."

"Oh, I came to realize that a long time ago. I was just bullshitting my deep love for myself because it seemed to entertain people." Axel shrugged. "I live to entertain the masses after all and everyone seemed to like it on some level when I was an asshole."

Roxas opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly hilarious and extremely sarcastic when Riku cut into the mini-argument. "You had something you wanted to tell me, Axel? You know, before Sora and Roxas succeeded in completely distracting you for the next two hours."

"Right!" Axel threw his hands up again, this time making sure not to bash into the reading lamp once more and turned to where Riku was watching him curiously. "So I woke up this morning to find Leon had been moved to the other bed and that he was awake and still intent on making me feel like shit."

"You told us that over the phone." Riku pointed out. "In fact, just about the entire school knows since Yuffie happened to be in the room when Roxas answered the phone."

"Cool." Axel smiled smugly. "Then that means Tifa and them should show up sometime soon. Now I won't have to wait for you to tell me what they think of this."

"Think of what?" Riku demanded, fully realizing that if Axel were allowed to go on unchecked then they would never get anywhere since Axel was the type to play up anything and everything to make himself seem more important. "And before you make another car salesman-esque pitch about how amazing this news is and how awesome you are for finding it out, may I point out that I now know exactly what tube controls your pain meds and I can either place you in a coma or send you into blinding pain. Your move."

"Leon and Cloud are in love with each other!" Axel quickly blurted out. Riku did in fact know how to manipulate Axel's pain medication and had taken to doing so when Axel's boredom had reached well beyond the level of merely irritating.

There was a sudden silence after his words and then the twins broke out into uncontrollable laughter.

"Hey! There was nothing funny about what I said!" Axel protested, though he was quite sure that the twins weren't exactly hearing him at the moment. "Riku, you believe me, right?"

"I don't disbelieve you." Riku stated cautiously. It would be just like Axel to come up with some harebrained idea or scheme without putting much thought into it after having been bedridden for what was fast approaching a week. Axel wasn't exactly known for his patience, but was very well known for his overactive imagination. "I just don't quite understand where you're coming from here."

"Think about it for a second." Axel pleaded in the hopes that maybe Riku really would listen to him instead of brushing him off like Roxas and Sora were prone to doing. "They argue like an old married couple for the most part, they practically read each other's minds and go out of their way to help one another out when they think no one else is looking, and they are the two most compatible people on the face of the planet because I don't know a single soul crazy enough to want to deal with them enough to spend twelve years of their lives living with either one of them."

"Just because they've chosen to live with either other for twelve years doesn't mean that they're in love…" Riku pointed out. "Though it might mean that they could be close enough that it wouldn't take much of a push to make them fall down that final step."

"No, they're already there." Axel held on stubbornly. "You weren't here, so you wouldn't know, but there was something the passed between them when they were talking earlier, and Cloud wouldn't even leave the hospital the whole time Leon was out of it. Hell, he's still lurking around here somewhere! I'm just not buying brotherly love as the reason. If that had been so, then why hadn't Sora or Roxas wanted to stay so bad…? And why would their mother have left if she hadn't known that Leon was going to be in the hands of someone who loved him as much or more than she did. There's not a hell of a lot that can stand up to a mother's love, bro. At least not _their_ mother's."

Sora and Roxas had stopped laughing by this time and were now looking at Axel as though he had just announced that he had actually been dead the whole time they had known him and that they had only been dreaming about him for the past five years.

"Dude…. You have been thinking about this for waaaaay too long." Roxas muttered as they collectively gathered around Axel's bed. "You're so obsessed with this bet that you're starting to see and think things just to try and prove a point. That's not healthy, and I say that with all the love in my heart because I don't think my sanity can stand to be dating someone truly insane."

"Hold on a second, Roxas." Sora was rubbing his chin thoughtfully and Axel felt a stirring of hope rising up inside of him. True, Roxas was really the stubborn one and winning Sora over wasn't difficult as making his blonde twin see reason, but getting one of them on his side could open a whole slew of doors that would hopefully lead to him winning a ton of munny in the near future. "If Axel really has thought about this as long and hard as he seems to have, the least we can do is hear him out and laugh about it for years to come."

Okay, so at least he was willing to listen. That _had_ to be worth _something_.

"Seriously guys, I've already pretty much proven that there's sexual feelings there. I think even Sora and Roxas will admit to that…" Axel sent a pleading look at his boyfriend and Roxas sighed.

"Fine, fine. There isn't much I can say to the contrary considering you somehow made it possible for most of the school to get a close-up view on Leon ogling my brother's ass when he wasn't looking…" Roxas shrugged as he conceded that point. "Of course, the circumstances were fairly vague and I'm pretty sure Leon may have just been doing it to mess with you, but I will run on the assumption that two sexually mature men living together might find _something_ to lust after in the other to humor you for now. That doesn't mean they fell in love somewhere along the way and are just… What? Denying it? Ignoring it? Accepting but unwilling to commit?"

"Roxas has a point, man." Riku stated slowly. "I'm just going with my own personal experiences here, but when you're in love you tend to know it, and you tend to want to let the other one know it as well."

"Lies and slander!" All eyes turned curiously over to where Sora was sitting cross-legged with his arms sternly pressed across his chest. "I have apparently been in love with my best friend for years and did nothing more than turn him down and wish for anything _but_ to tell him about it… But back to the subject at hand… I'm not going to say that they are in love with each other, but I do have to point out that they are not exactly open books or the type of people to sit back and throw up their hands in defeat when faced with a difficult task or emotion. It would be just like them to hide everything and continue on with their lives without bothering to consult with the other for the sheer fact that they feel as though to admit such feelings would be to put a hindrance on the other's life. They're guilty little assholes like that."

"That they are, my friend!" Axel exclaimed, half wondering why his best friend and the person he had expected to be on his side was fighting him and Sora, one of the ones he was expecting never to see reason, was, well, seeing reason. "They fight conventions every step of the way. They argue and they bitch and they drag their heels and they make a spectacle of themselves in order to show the world that they will do what it expects in their own time, in their own way and the universe be damned if it doesn't like it. It would be totally like them to be waging internal wars without the thought of actually _saying_ something ever daring to cross their minds."

"Okay, just because it would be like them doesn't mean that's what's going on." Roxas was the first one to point out a flaw in Axel's reasoning. "Why can't you be satisfied with them being best friends and let it settle on that note? Why does there have to be something behind this whole deal? You've gone and convinced the entire fucking student body that there's something there so now even the people who were betting on nothing are now worried about what will happen if they don't start measures to sabotage a relationship that I'm not entirely sure wants to exist. Do you even fully understand what you guys are _doing_ here?"

"Uh, no… Not really now that you mention it." Riku admitted and Axel nodded in the background, not trusting himself not to say something stupid.

"You are both impossible."Roxas threw his hands up in the air in surrender. "You can go on believing what you want to believe and the school is going to believe what they want to believe, and no one is going to ask Leon and Cloud how they feel on the matter and this is all going to explode at graduation when they will undoubtedly find out and kill us all in a screaming ball of fire and pain. Unless someone drops the ball sooner than that and leaks the secret, bringing about the pain and death sooner than anticipated. You do know that they aren't idiots and that you guys are lucky they haven't noticed something more out of the ordinary than usual as of yet, right?"

"I was quite aware of that, thank you very much." Axel said haughtily, more trying to save face than anything else at this point. And trying to cover for his serious lapse in judgment when it came down to enjoying the torture that needn't have happened in plain sight of the brother of the ones he was torturing. That was also very important. "Roxas, it has gone so far out of our hands at this point that you really should be thanking me and Riku for being the ones to try and look out for their interests better than most of the others that are in this just for the munny and the glory."

"Yeah." Riku piped in quickly before Roxas or Sora could say something else and the moment would pass. "We just want your brothers to be happy when this is all said and done. We already know they're going to be angry, that's a given where anything involving them in concerned, but we also want them to come out of this with something in hand instead of merely a disillusioned view of their friends."

There was a short silence following Riku's words and then Sora was the first one to slowly smile, with Roxas' thin shadow of a grin following immediately afterwards.

"Thank you for that." Sora said softly. "It's so easy to get caught up in the scheme's and plots and good and bad information that's been floating around, so it's nice to know once and for all that this isn't just a game to you two. All we wanted was to know that you really cared about them and what they thought and where they would end up once this whole hullabaloo has blown over. I guess we were kind of in the wrong for jumping to the conclusion that you didn't care."

"This doesn't mean that we're going to help you, though." Roxas cut it. "We're still firmly on the side that there is nothing to bet over because nothing is there and nothing was there and nothing ever will be there, but we won't yell at you about it quite as often if that makes you feel any better."

"It does." Axel was grinning now. There was a whole hell of a lot that could go wrong and that was probably going to go wrong, but right now none of that seemed to matter. Right now he had his friends and the man that he loved and there was absolutely nothing he would do to change that.

He would have said something to that effect, too, had it not be for the sudden (and loud) arrival of Cloud and Leon, the former trying to run the latter into every wall he could find while Leon screamed about Cloud's kidneys and exactly who he was going to sell them to once he was allowed to walk on his own.

Okay, so maybe there were a few things about his life that Axel wouldn't have minded changing…

* * *

"It's nice to see you up and insulting everyone again, dear." Mrs. Strife had more patience than anyone living and dead in Axel's opinion. The silvery-blonde woman reached out and patted Leon gently on the head and ignored the scorching glare that went with it. "Though I do have to say that it's a shame when Axel's been the one that's been causing the least amount of trouble for the time he's been here."

"Which is saying something since you've been unconscious for the majority of _your_ stay here." Axel murmured as he glanced down at the group of cards in his hands before scanning the group of young men surrounding his side of the room. There weren't a lot of people who wanted to be within arm's reach of a very bored Leon after all. His side was safer for the time being. "Sora, you got any Jacks?"

"Go fish."

"Bite me." Leon turned the full force of his glare on Axel, but since he couldn't exactly get up out of the bed and make good on his silent threats, it went pretty much ignored. "How much longer did they say I was going to have to stay here? There's a ton of shit that needs to get done and I can't do it if I'm constantly being pushed back into this fucking uncomfortable bed every time I try do so much as go to the bathroom."

"I think you're going to have to get used to it." Cloud cut in from where he was reading over a homework assignment that Roxas had brought him earlier that day. "I'm not going to help you either. Consider it payback for getting that huge orderly to pour ice water on my head earlier."

"Cloud, you smelled disgusting. He had every right to do that." Roxas pointed out as he studied his own cards. "Riku, would you happen to have a four?"

"Fuck." Riku scowled and relinquished the requested card before turning his aqua gaze onto Axel's distracted form. "Axel, my man! May I interest you in giving up a six?"

"Go fish, asshole."

"Honestly, Leon, you were in a coma for five days. That means head injury as well as the other internal crap they had to deal with." Mrs. Strife was still smiling sweetly, but there was a slight twitch slowly developing in her right eye. "I'd be surprised if you got out next week, much less this one. Besides, I'm sure Cloud will bring you all your homework and whatever else you could want from the dorm."

"Will not."

"You will, too. Roxas and I aren't going to be shuttling homework back and forth for the next few weeks. You two are on your own." Sora chewed on his bottom lip for a second and shifted a pair of cards around in his hand. "Roxas, I'm thinking that I'm going to need that King you're hiding."

Roxas grumbled something uncomplimentary under his breath but offered up his King none the less as Axel rubbed a thoughtful finger over his chin before looking at Riku with a predatory gleam in his eyes. "Riku, I'm sure you're not going to tell me that you don't have a two, are you?"

"Fuckin' A." Riku flicked the card in Axel's general direction and went back to scrutinizing his hand. "You guys have a camera set up behind me, don't you?"

"We do not." Roxas stated calmly as he glanced over at his twin. "Sora, nines?"

"Go fish."

"The peanut gallery isn't helping." Leon grumbled, clearly put out by the thought that he wasn't about to be allowed to go anywhere any time soon. "Better question: When's _Axel_ leaving?"

"Tomorrow." Mrs. Strife answered, figuring that Axel himself was too involved in trying to pry a Jack from Riku's resisting fingers to do so. "And before you get angry… Axel only had a twisted back and a moderate concussion. You lost almost half of your blood and have a bruised kidney and ribs as well as a ruptured spleen. There is a rather large difference in the damage the two of you took and how long it's going to take for that damage to heal."

"If it makes you feel any better, the next time we do something stupid, Mom isn't going to want to take your spleen from you again." Cloud flipped a page in his text and highlighted something in the margin. "It's damaged property now. Useless to her."

"So long as it's not useless to me, I guess I don't have much of a problem with that." Leon sighed deeply and leant back against his pillows, trying desperately to ignore the sounds of a scuffle coming from Axel's side of the room as the card game began to get more and more violent. "How have you been, Mom?... And you can gloss over the worry and all that."

"Well enough considering my son has been knocked out for five days, and, no, I'm not going to let that drop as of yet. I've still got a few more miles to go on it until the guilt wears completely off." Mrs. Strife smiled softly and resisted the urge to ruffle Leon's hair, realizing that he wasn't likely to appreciate it. "The children at the orphanage called. They wanted to know if you were feeling well enough for them to drop by for a visit. Edea and Quistis have been worried about you, too."

"I'm _fine_." Leon grimaced as Cloud reached out and toed the edge of the bed hard enough to rock it back and forth a bit. "Ouch, you bloody bastard!"

"Not sounding too fine to me…" Cloud once again turned another page and highlighted another piece of information as opposed to meeting Leon's spiteful glare.

"As rude as that may have been, Cloud's right." Mrs. Strife sent a stern look at her eldest, but Cloud didn't notice as he was now once more completely absorbed in what he was doing. "But I will let Edea know that she can bring the kids by tomorrow once the older ones get out of school."

Leon grunted his approval, but didn't seem happy at all about the news that he wasn't going to be able to leave as soon as he wished to. "I don't think they're all going to be able to fit in here."

"There is a perfectly good cafeteria downstairs that has more room than it really needs." Mrs. Strife relaxed down into her chair, confident that her adopted son had finally calmed enough so that he wasn't about to do something stupid like trying to get up and walk away on his own. "But if you aren't quite feeling up to it… then I guess the children can wait. They have gone five days without seeing you after all. What's the harm in a few more?"

"I would just like for you to know that I hate you and I am going to continue to do so for the foreseeable future." Leon responded and stared off petulantly into the distance as Mrs. Strife smiled gratefully and Cloud tried and failed to hide his slight smirk behind his text.

"I'll show you how to fucking go fish, asshole!"

And then talking wasn't much of an issue because there was a much better way to pass their time in watching the mess of boys rolling around on the linoleum floor as the twins tried to pry a card out of Riku's tight grasp and Axel helped by throwing anything not nailed down into the fray.

"You _dick_! You ripped my fucking seven!"

* * *

"It's embarrassing to get kicked out of the hospital over a children's card game, you know." Riku scuffed his shoes absentmindedly against the gravel covered ground as he and the twins walked through a park situated close to the hospital they had just been forcibly removed from. "Cloud was in there tormenting the entirety of the medical staff for five days without getting thrown out and we couldn't last for five hours. There's something highly ironic and disturbing in that, but I think I'm too tired to work out exactly what."

"It would have all been okay if you hadn't resisted in giving up your fucking seven." Sora pointed out tersely as he nursed his bruised arm. "You also didn't make matters any better by punching Roxas in the face or by threatening to eat the arm of the intern that pried you off of Axel's nightstand."

"I'm not forgiving you for the black eye by the way." Roxas put his two munny's worth in and went back to glowering at the ground as it though it was the earth's fault he had participated in a brawl in a hospital room.

"You don't have to, and if Riku is thinking that he's going to have a companion with him in his bed tonight, then he's sorely mistaken." Riku groaned in disbelief. All that time spent to make Sora more receptive to him and now more time was going to be wasted because he had gotten a little carried away in the midst of a card game. Life was so unfair sometimes.

"How is that working out for you, Sora?" Roxas asked genially, ignoring Riku's sullen pout as the other young man shuffled along on the outskirts of the conversation, knowing that anything he would want to add would be either ignored or mocked at that point. "I mean, you were so adamant that he was an idiot not worth your time and now you're withholding sex just like a good boyfriend would."

Sora smiled and shrugged. "It took a bit of adjusting, but I found that with you as my role model, this whole dating thing isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to thank you."

"The tortured looks on Riku's face that are sure to follow throughout the next several years are more than enough thanks for me." Roxas chuckled maliciously and a part of Riku died with a small squeak as Roxas effectively strangled it with his bare hands. Not even the dull hope that Sora was just messing with him because he was angry and that he wasn't really quite so evil was enough to stop his stomach from freefalling out of his abdomen and flopping around at his feet. "Hey, if I can turn _Axel _into something that is fit to be taken out into public, just imagine what I can help you do with Riku."

"I don't think I have a big enough imagination to do so, but I'll make a valiant effort to try." Sora shot an evil look over at his new boyfriend as Riku shook his head sadly and resisted the urge to just lie down on the ground and invite everyone he knew to walk all over him. It wasn't like he could fight it any longer. Not with Sora finally saying more 'yes' than 'no' lately. "But really, I think I'm finally starting to be a little bit more happy with my life."

"Mom will be pleased." Roxas patted his brother on the shoulder as they slowed down to sit on a nearby bench, Sora eventually giving in and scooting over enough for Riku to sit down as well. "But now on to more pressing matters than your finally existent love life. What are we going to do about all this stupid shit where our brothers are concerned?"

"If you're talking about Axel, then there's really nothing we can do." Sora pointed out as he slumped back against the bench. "He's going to believe whatever he wants to believe whether you want him to or not. You of all people should know this."

"I do know this, and I'm not too worried about my boyfriend right now. I can handle anything he may want to attempt for now at least." Roxas quickly shot a look around the park to make sure there was no one walking by that they knew or that didn't need to be privy to their conversation. "I'm talking about Demyx and his stupid interference."

There was a short silence following Roxas' statement and Riku was the first one to break it. "I don't think this is fun anymore. Hell, I don't think anyone thinks this is fun anymore. We're all just hanging in there for the sake of completeness or something at this point. It's like a car accident… Or that stupid soap opera Cloud and Leon have mysteriously become addicted to. You really don't want to watch anymore, but at some point you've become invested in it and you just want to see how it all ends."

"Except this isn't some stupid soap opera where even if the character dies, the actor doesn't and people can be written in and out at will without any consequences." Sora kicked a pebbled angrily. "These are my brothers' lives and, more importantly, Leon's past that has now been broadcast for all the world to hear except for him."

"There's nothing we _can_ do." Riku pointed out. "If Cloud knows and hasn't said anything, then who are we to jump in and change that? There's got to be a good reason for Cloud to not have shared this information with Leon yet. Maybe there's something more that we're missing, something that we don't need to be knowing."

"Or maybe Cloud's just being an insecure idiot and isn't exactly the best person to be making these kinds of decisions." Roxas glared angrily at the ground while Sora started chewing on his bottom lip, waiting for his twin to go on. "Leon thinks his real father is dead, as does Mom. Hell, I think even _Edea_ thinks that Leon's dad kicked the bucket not long after he was born. There would be no reason for Cloud to keep that from _them_."

"So if he's told them but Leon still doesn't know then there's something going on between the three of them." Riku picked up on Roxas' train of thought easily. "Maybe his dad's a criminal or something and is in jail for like capital murder. Or maybe he's a drug dealer or transvestite prostitute."

"We'll know soon enough." Sora rested his head on Riku's shoulder, suddenly too tired to want to think through this issue any longer. "Demyx is supposed to be finding out exactly who it is, isn't he?"

"Supposedly." Riku offered up. "Normally, I would say not to be too worried about it, but he does have Zexion on his side and Larxene has caught onto to what's going on and is now throwing herself into their plot. I say we've got a couple of weeks before Leon's father's identity is public knowledge to everyone but him."

"Cloud's going to eat our souls using our kidneys as bread." Sora moaned as he buried his face in Riku's neck. "There is no way he's going to believe that we didn't have a hand in this. Whatever he knows he's not saying for a reason and our friends are _ruining _that."

"But there's nothing we can do." Roxas tilted his head back to look up at the sky. "There's too much riding on this for both sides. The only thing I can think of is to confront Cloud, but that wouldn't really be the best of plans either since then we'd have to tell him how we found out and the whole bet thing would come out in the open once and for all. Then we'd be killed."

"We could ask Mom." Sora suggested, tilting his head away from Riku enough so that his words could be heard much better. "We did come to the conclusion that she knows, right?"

"But what if she doesn't?" Riku's leg twitched nervously. "Then we've just made her worry and Cloud will find out and then so will Leon and then all three of them will know about the bet and then we're all just going to die that much faster…. My head hurts…"

"I'm starting to think we're in a lose/lose situation here." Roxas sighed heavily and pushed up onto his feet. "No matter who we go to in the hopes of stopping this, there's no way to know how much they know or if they know anything at all, and then we've just proved that we're into something we shouldn't be into."

"It's only going to end in pain." Sora agreed. "God, and to think, this sounded like a funny idea at the beginning. Put Leon and Cloud on the spot a little bit, make them sweat some for all the shit they've put us through, but it's not funny anymore and it's not a game. Leon and Cloud do not need the entire student body to be digging into their private lives and now it's gotten to the point where there is no way to turn back and end this without someone getting hurt, and I don't think it's going to be us."

"What are you talking about?" Riku asked as he pulled back a little so that he could see his new boyfriend's face. "Of course we're going to be hurting. I've been on the receiving end of one of Leon's temper tantrums before. It was a miracle all my bones were intact once it was all over."

"You don't think Leon has feelings?" Roxas asked incredulously. "Just because he acts like everything rolls right off his back, it doesn't. He's a normal human being underneath all the posturing and shields he puts up. He's not going to come right out and say anything about it, but this is something that's going to bother him. It's going to cause him pain, and it's going to do the same to Cloud, not to mention their relationship. Whatever reason Cloud has for hiding what he knows, it must seem like a good one to him, but that doesn't mean Leon's going to understand it or be grateful about it. This could set them to fighting in a way that they might not be able to recover from and it's all our faults."

Riku was stunned into silence. He had always just been used to Leon and Cloud being best friends, and even though they fought worse than most biological siblings, they had never quite hit a point where they had gone their separate ways. Riku had just always assumed it had something to do with the way they secretly felt for each other than anything else, but it might have just been because, for all their disagreements and petty arguments, they had never really stumbled across something of such an intense magnitude that they just couldn't work around it. The thought that the stupid bet might in the end be the cause of Leon and Cloud finally falling out for good sickened Riku in a way that he hadn't been expecting and he stumbled across his thoughts as he struggled to find something at least partially articulate to say.

"There has _got _to be a way to stop that from happening." He managed to get out around the lump in his throat. "I don't think I could stand to look myself in the mirror every day knowing that I was the cause of Leon and Cloud not being at least friends anymore."

"So what do we _do_?" Sora whined. "We've already agreed that each and every road we turn down is going to be a dead end, but that doesn't leave us with anything concrete to take action on. I'm not going to just sit back in the shadows and watch as my brothers are being dragged down for amusement's sake."

"I don't like it either, but there's nothing we really _can_ do. Nothing that will help in any case." Roxas pointed out as he began to pace in front of the bench, not trusting himself to stand still any longer for fear that he would just explode. "Going to Mom is out of the question. If she knows then she'll want to know how we found out and then she'll be on a vendetta to get Demyx and his crew. If she doesn't know then we've got an even bigger problem on our hands and she does not need to be adding to her stress load right about now. Not with her new meds still trying to take effect."

"We can't go to Cloud either." Sora added. "He'll be worse than Mom when it comes to hunting down every last person on the face of this planet that knows about it in an effort to keep Leon from finding out. And that will just make Leon even angrier when someone does eventually let it slip."

"Well, Demyx didn't know who Leon's father was, and he was only marginally certain that Sephiroth knew what the hell he was talking about when he got the information." Riku couldn't help but snicker a bit. "The only way to pry information out of my brother is to catch him when he's drunk, and if you do that then there is a very high chance of him blustering about so much that he doesn't know all the details of what he knows, just that he knew he that he knew them once upon a time… My head hurts again."

"Do you ever take the time to think through what you want to say before you say it?" Roxas asked and Riku and shrugged and shook his head. "Didn't think so, but you do have a point. For all we know, Demyx or Zexion cornered him and tried and make it seem like he knew more than he did just because he didn't want to lose face."

"That would be just like him." Riku agreed. "I think I'm going to have to make a quick trip home tonight to find out for sure, but if he doesn't know shit other than Leon's father is alive somewhere then we have time to cover the trail and if we play our cards right then no one ever has to know."

"Yeah, and if the rumor gets around that Leon's dad is still alive then it'll most likely go through Cloud first and _he_ can handle it." Sora sat up and bounced to his feet. "So… Problem pretty much solved. Let's go back to the dorm and eat ice cream until we get diabetes. It's been one of those weeks, you know?"

"Fuck yes I know." Riku grinned as Sora helped him to his feet. "I think it's been one of those _semesters_."

Both twins looked at him tiredly and nodded.

"Damn straight."

* * *

"What are you doing?" Leon whispered as Cloud maneuvered himself into Leon's hospital bed. "Axel's sleeping, not dead."

"He might as well be dead for all the sedatives I conned the nurse into giving him. Don't tell Aerith about that by the way. She made me promise I would stop messing with Axel's doses just to get what I wanted." Cloud pushed gently against his boyfriend's hip and Leon sighed and moved over a few inches to give him more room, accepting it as Cloud's arms went around his waist and placing one of his own arms around the blonde's shoulders. "I missed being able to sleep next to you, you know. You've got me spoiled."

Leon shook his head as Cloud set about getting himself comfortable. "I wish I could laugh that off and pretend you were just messing with me, but I know better. If it makes you feel better, I wasn't planning on being a hero when I left that morning. It just kind of happened."

"Yeah, I know." Cloud murmured his agreement into Leon's chest as he finally stopped his wiggling around. "If it makes _you_ feel any better, I would probably have hated you more had you just stood by and let Axel die."

"Well that's something good to know for future reference." Leon shifted a bit so that Cloud's arm wasn't pressing quite so hard against his sore side before continuing. "Axel's not really that bad of a person I guess. He seems to know where he's going in his life and he would do anything to make Roxas happy. I suppose our baby brother deserves that."

"Not to mention the fact that Roxas can be more stubborn than both you and I combined when he gets it into his head to do so." Cloud pointed out. "Look, I'm not going to make you feel guilty or anything because you really couldn't help what happened. It was an accident, an unfortunate one that could have been worse than it was, but it was still an accident none the less. I just want you to know that I love you and that I was worried about you and that if were ever to happen again, I would be just as worried."

"Had it been you in this bed and me out there I think I would have torn this hospital to pieces out of anxiety." Leon smirked as Cloud chuckled into his chest. "From what I've heard, you just sent four interns, two nurses, one resident, and three orderlies into therapy, as well as almost setting the kitchen on fire and exposing a cheating doctor. That's restrained for you."

"I also took all the wheels off the wheelchairs on the fourth floor and wounded two security guards." Cloud added in. "But I guess you're right. All in all, I was fairly restrained considering the unholy amount of stress I was under. It could have been a lot worse."

"How did that Medical Power of Attorney thing go for you?" Leon asked. At the time they had been discussing things like who should be in charge of what, Leon had been hesitant about taking his power of attorney away from his adopted mother in favor of giving it to Cloud. Considering that it was a college town that seemed to have more gays than straights on most days, it was a safe bet that no one would give them a problem, but it was his job to worry about supposedly trivial junk.

"I ran into some problems at first, but when I explained the full situation, they relented." Cloud admitted. "Aerith helped, too, once she got here, though I'd gotten it pretty much handled by that point. I'm glad you let me talk you into giving it to me. I'm not sure there would have been a hospital for you to wake up in if I hadn't been able to be in the loop."

"I don't doubt that in the slightest." Leon rubbed a hand gently up and down Cloud's back. "I wish I hadn't put you in such a spot, but there really was nothing I could do. Axel was worth it, you know. I never thought I would live to see the day when I would say that willingly, but it's true. He's loud, obnoxious and probably the worst match for Roxas when it comes to personalities, but he's what our little brother wants and he's a good guy underneath the sarcasm."

"I could say the same thing about another asshole I know." Cloud teased lightly. "He's a bit of a jerk and he doesn't tend to want others to know that he actually loves quite a few things in his life. He also moonlights as a hero when he thinks no one's paying attention. Like pushing people out of the way of cars and junk."

"You suck. Go to sleep."

"I don't want to go to sleep. You've been out of it for five days and I haven't been able to talk to you. I'm trying to fit all that not talking in now while Axel's dead and Mom's not hovering around." Leon could practically feel Cloud's self-satisfied smile and toyed with the idea of not answering him and just going to sleep, but he realized that Cloud had probably had the worst week he'd had in a long time and that talking to him for a few hours was the least he could do to make up for it.

"So what do you want to talk about?" Leon asked, still running lazy patterns up under Cloud's shirt and across the smooth skin of his back. "First I do have a question. Has anything happened this week that I need to know about?"

"Not really." Cloud paused for a second to think if he'd heard anything Leon might like to know about. "Granted I haven't left the hospital since I got here on Saturday, so I wouldn't really be the best person to ask, but I haven't heard about anything too terribly interesting going on. The twins would be the ones to ask about that, or Riku. Apparently Yuffie's been stalking him for news for the past five days. He's bound to pick up some piece of gossip or another with her flitting around behind him."

"You really didn't leave here for five days, didn't you?" Leon asked softly, almost not wanting to know the answer. "Mom wasn't kidding or over-exaggerating, was she?"

"No, no she wasn't. I really have been here for five days, and no, you are not going to put me on a guilt trip about it because it wouldn't have made a difference if I were home or not. I still would have been worried and I still would have been freaking out." Cloud shrugged easily. "In fact, I would have been more stressed had I been at home because then I wouldn't have had the option of looking over and _seeing_ that you were okay. I can't tell you how much of a relief it was to be able to glance over and _show_ myself that you were still breathing, that I wasn't dreaming that you hadn't passed on or gone into surgery again or something. The nurses were actually pretty accommodating once they realized I had no intention of going anywhere, no matter how uncomfortable they made my cot."

"Only you could look at a situation like that and pick out something good." Leon mumbled, more proud of his lover than he had any right to be. Cloud was strong, he liked that. "But thanks for looking out for me."

"I would like to think you would have done the same were the positions reversed." Leon nodded solemnly. He probably wouldn't have been as calm about it, and most definitely would have had a more violent reaction, but he would have been there for Cloud.

He also probably would have taken the time to shower, but even that was kind of sweet in a way.

"Oh! Something did happen this week that you would want to know about!" Cloud resisted the urge to bounce because doing so would have hurt Leon, but he did tilt his head upwards enough so that Leon could see his bright smile. "Sora finally agreed to go out with Riku. I think they're doing it."

"Wow. I was put into a coma and my little brother started having sex with his best friend after five years of denying his obvious love for him." Leon exhaled loudly and shook his head. "Damn it. I wanted to see it when that happened. I just had the worst timing for going into a coma, didn't I?"

"As much I would have preferred it if you hadn't had to go into a coma in the first place, I do have to say that they would probably still be circling around each other if it hadn't been for this." Cloud rested his chin on Leon's breastbone gently. "I think you and Axel's accident showed Sora that he didn't have forever to wait and see, and that he needed to take his life in his own hands for a change."

"So Sora's not the 'normal' one anymore. That's a relief." Leon laid his head back against his pillow and closed his eyes. "I don't think I could take another day of him trying to be something he isn't. Now, Riku's a boyfriend choice I can whole-heartedly support."

"True story." Cloud agreed as he went back to settling down for the night.

"What? You don't have anything else you want to talk about?" Leon asked irritably. "You bothered me for a two minute conversation that we could have easily had tomorrow?"

"That sounds about right."

"Fuck that, I'm totally awake now, and you're just going to have to deal with the consequences."

"You do realize that I grew up in a house with you and two younger, twin brothers, correct?" Cloud asked sarcastically. "I don't think that ignoring you is going to be much of a problem."

"Yeah, well… Windshield wipers annoy me."

There was a brief silence and then…

"Okay, so you've intrigued me. Go on."

And, at that point, there was really nothing more they could do but laugh. It might have been one of the worst weeks of their lives but they had come out of it relatively in one piece and there really wasn't anything wrong with that in the grand scheme of things.

"I love you, Leon."

"Yeah… I love you, too."

* * *

_**A/N: **Okay... So that's one chapter down for now. I really would like to apologize one last time for the delay that issure to follow once more where the next chapter is concerned. The rodeo, it eats my life.... Oh, and good luck on being the fifth reviewer! ^_^_

_~Scout out~_


	14. Day OneHundredNinetySix: Not A Good Day?

_**A/N: **So I am very sorry about the wait, but there isn't a lot I can do about it. I've taken an internship with a horse chiropractor and we travel pretty much all over everywhere! Yeah, so the net is not always a constant. Like, I've been holding thia chapter forever and ever and I just now have I had the reliable Internet to get it up....._

_I'M NOT DEAD BUT I AM REALLY SORRY!!!_

_So this story is almost done... Like five more chapies I think....? Maybe.... Anyways, heres to hoping the next installment is semi-quickly. Woot!_

* * *

**Chapter Eleven:**

_**Day One-Hundred and Ninety-Six: Dear Diary, This Was Not a Good Day**_

"So you came home and found Cloud curled up on the bottom two stairs passed out asleep and Leon nowhere to be found?" Roxas shook his head slowly as he contemplated his glass of water. "I would say this surprises me, but that would be a lie. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest."

"It didn't surprise me much either, though Leon could have actually cared enough to make sure Cloud made it to the couch before running away." Mrs. Strife sighed as she looked over at where Cloud was now snoring loudly on the sofa, not concerned in the slightest that people were having a conversation about him. "Though I think that might have been part of his plan. It would be just like him to start an argument with the hopes of Cloud getting so tired that he would just give up and let Leon go."

"He still could have tossed Cloud a blanket or something." Sora pointed out as he rolled over on the floor to lie on his back. "But I guess he's still an asshole despite everything Cloud did for him while he was in the hospital. Those cots could _not_ have been comfortable."

"They weren't, that's why I'm trying to sleep now." Cloud's gruff voice drifted out from deep within the couch cushions as the blonde turned over so his back was to his family. "Bloody loudasses."

"Sorry, sweetheart, but you wouldn't have to listen to us if you went to your room like I suggested." Mrs. Strife crossed her legs and sat back her chair, knowing full well that she wasn't going to get her eldest to move, but willing to try on the off-chance she was wrong.

"I can't yell at him when he gets home if I'm in my room." Cloud paused for a second to yawn. "He's too smart to come straight to our room when he gets home."

"You're not going to do anyone any good if you're too tired to keep your eyes open." Mrs. Strife held in her disappointed sigh as Cloud raised his shoulders once in indifference and went back to dozing. "I don't see how I ever get any of you to listen to a word I say. The whole lot of you are stubborn beasts."

"But we're stubborn beasts that you love and who love you very much in return." Sora pointed out. "Look at it this way, you could have had a group of sons that took off at the very first opportunity never to be seen again."

"So you bother me because you love me?" Mrs. Strife asked. "I guess I'm going to have to take that at face value and move on with my life, aren't I?"

"Mom… You know we'd do anything for you if it was something that absolutely needed to be done… Or if it's something that will help you in any way." Roxas sunk a little deeper into his chair and tapped his fingers gently against his knee. "I fail to see how Cloud actually getting a few hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep is something that absolutely needs to happen or that will help you out. I think he feels that same."

There was a muffled grunt from Cloud's general direction that Roxas took as an agreement to his statement.

"Anyways, Cloud isn't the point here for once. He's going to run himself ragged all on his own without our help or judgment." Roxas continued. "Sora and his new relationship is what we should really be discussing on the other hand. How is that coming along, my dearest sibling?"

"Bite my ass, Roxas." Sora offered up from the floor. "I don't have to tell you anything, and, quite frankly, it isn't any of your damn business so stop bribing _your_ boyfriend to pry information out of _my _boyfriend. It's very unappreciated."

"Boys, boys, boys." Mrs. Strife interrupted, as she tried to ward off the headache she could feel building at the back of her brain. If it wasn't one set of boys arguing in her house, it was the other. And if both sets found that they had nothing to fight about amongst themselves, then both factions had to get together to snipe at each other because no gathering was complete without an impending hospital trip. "Roxas, stop using your boyfriend to try and wedge your way into your twin's life. Sora, you didn't used to curse so much, so stop it."

There was a brief silence as the twins pouted in their respective corners of the room before Mrs. Strife couldn't take it any longer.

"So, Sora, how _is_ your relationship with Riku going?"

"_Mom_…" Sora sighed deeply as the inner teen in him rebelled against discussing his love life with his mother. "We _really_ don't need to talk about me and Riku right now… Or ever really. I'm perfectly okay with never talking about it."

"Now, Sora, honey, I'm your mother and that means I'm going to be prying into every corner of your life at every opportunity. You know this, and you also know I'm not going to be giving up, and I think Roxas will back me up on that…" Sora groaned loudly and Roxas grinned maliciously. Cloud let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle from his spot on the couch but it was kind of hard to tell. It could have just been another snore. "So, go on. Tell us everything."

"There's nothing much to tell." Sora protested, not wanting to give up that there really was a whole hell of a lot to tell, but that it was all very much in the realm of things he never wanted to discuss with his mother present. "We've only been going out for three weeks. He's been pretty much the same Riku I've always known… Just more touchy feely."

"Sure he has." Roxas waved a hand in the air as a form of dismissal. "So how long did it take for you to start doing it with him."

"Roxas!" Sora shot up into a sitting position and sent his twin the dirtiest look he could manage around his neon red blush. "That is none of your damn business!"

"So you _have_ been doing it with him." Roxas murmured as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I guess I owe Cloud twenty munny."

"Damn right you do." Cloud interjected as he rolled over so as to get a better view of the action. "I told you he wasn't going to be able to last. All those times he denied himself made it that much harder to resist."

"You're supposed to be asleep!" Sora sputtered, trying to grab onto something, anything that would take him securely out of this conversation. "And besides, it's not Cloud's business what I do in my personal life either."

"Doesn't mean I wasn't right."

Mrs. Strife laughed lightly. "Sora, you are a twenty year old man who is very much in love with the person he is dating. There are far worse people you could be having sex with than Riku. It's never embarrassing to admit to being with the one you love."

"_Mom_!" Sora flopped back down onto the floor and covering his face in his hands. "I am _so_ not having this conversation right now."

"Too bad." Roxas chirped cheerfully, happy to finally be able to put Sora on the spot for once. His darker-haired twin was always pulling out the embarrassment where Roxas and Axel were concerned that it was about time he was able to get some of that right back. "You can just tell us about it, you know. It's obvious we already know, so what's the harm in just saying it out loud?"

"Mommy, make him stop bothering me!" Sora wailed and he rolled over to bury his face in the carpet as though doing so would make him disappear.

"I think Mom wants to know just as badly as the rest of us."

"You are _not_ helping, Cloud!" Sora lifted his head up and sent his older brother a death glare, before slamming it back down into the carpet, this time hoping to knock himself unconscious.

"Not trying to help. Trying to hinder."

"And succeeding." Roxas was practically cackling with glee now. "Come on, Sora. I told you when I first started doing it with Axel. Turnabout's fair play."

Sora merely mumbled into the carpet something that sounded awfully like a prayer for deliverance.

"Sora, sweetheart, I am going to find out sooner or later, probably through Roxas, which means that Cloud probably will already know by that time as well." Mrs. Strife smiled sweetly at where her still prone son was now flailing his arms and legs about a little in an effort to maybe swim away from the sudden assault. "It's nothing for you to get so worked up about. It's a natural part of life. Roxas threw a fit just like this when he told me, but he's still alive. People don't _really_ die of embarrassment. Besides, it can't be worse than the time I cornered Cloud. I think there are still teeth marks on the walls in the bathroom upstairs."

"Cloud's had sex!?"

It was highly possible that there was no physical way that anyone could shriek any louder than the twins just had, but if it wasn't, Cloud and Mrs. Strife didn't think their eardrums would survive the encounter. It was almost loud enough that Cloud didn't quite register exactly what the words were inside the shriek and it wasn't until a full ten seconds after the ringing in his ears had died down that he realized that the twins were still staring wide-eyed at him and were apparently waiting for him to fill in the rather large blank their mother had just left in her wake.

"Mom!" Now it was Cloud's turn to stare at his mother in horror. "What the hell are you trying to do to me here?"

"Sorry, sweetie." Mrs. Strife looked a little bit sorry, but more amused and Cloud almost couldn't find it in his heart to glare, but he managed to get a good one out anyways. "I forgot that was a touchy subject with you."

Cloud desperately wanted to answer back with a sarcastic 'Did not', but refrained at the last second before turning to his brothers and giving them the most condescending look he could muster. "Of course I have. There have been more people than stupid Sephiroth in my life. I'm fucking hot. That doesn't mean I was going to consult with the two of you every time it happened."

"Wow, I think my world has been rocked and my mind has been effectively blown. Who would have thought that Cloud would have allowed himself to be in a relationship long enough to get to that point?" Roxas was really and truly floored. "Fuck, I didn't think you'd ever dated anyone."

"I'm twenty-three years old. Of course I've dated people before. I'm not a complete shut in, douchebag." Cloud growled out as he sunk back down into the couch cushions, his mind racing full speed on the off chance that the twins wanted something more…. Something such as names. He was pretty sure that telling them the only person he'd really and truly slept with was Leon wouldn't go over very well for everyone involved. That and it was starting to seem more and more pathetic to him that he apparently was okay with settling for the first guy to show interest.

Never mind that they had both been thirteen at the time and not exactly in the stages of their lives where rational thought took over.

Sora shook his head weakly. "Next you're going to tell me that Leon's had sex before, too… Oh my God… He _has_, hasn't he? That's why he'd come home so late from those dates with Rinoa. I can't _believe _that neither one of you told us!"

"I can't believe you care enough to throw this big of a fit." Cloud sniffed melodramatically and crossed his arms over his chest in the hopes that the conversation were to be closed. "Look, let's take a second to come to terms with the fact that we are like every other functioning male in the universe and then get on with our lives, okay."

"No sir." Roxas responded stubbornly. "You've pried every last bit of painfully embarrassing memories from us when we didn't want to speak, now it's your turn to be put on the spot and we want answers."

"Well, I'm not going to give you answers so you can just go fuck yourselves for all I care." Cloud sent out a very menacing look that backed up his statement before disappearing once more into the deep folds of the couch.

"Sora, Roxas, I really don't think you should push the issue right now. He's tired enough as it is." Roxas and Sora sent their mother looks of shock at her suddenly supportive standpoint. Normally she would have been pestering her eldest right along with them whether she already knew the answers or not. "May I remind you of the bite marks in the upstairs bathroom? And that happened at nine o'clock in the morning when he was wide awake and had slept a full eight hours in his own bed, not after being so tired as to pass out on the stairway after having spent three weeks in a hospital cot."

"How _did_ he get bite marks on the walls in their bathroom?" Sora asked, confused as to why his mother wanted the change of subject, but willing to go along with it if only for the fact that she had a point. Cloud had attempted to kill for lesser offenses than pestering him when he was running on little sleep. It really wasn't a safe time to be putting him on the spot. "Half of me is saying that I really don't want to know, but the other half is just too damn curious to be worried about becoming mentally scarred."

"Some of those marks are almost to the ceiling." Roxas pointed out, also agreeing with his twin's similar thought that putting Cloud in a volatile mood would be bad for their healths. "He's not that fucking tall. And I don't think he can jump quite that high… At least, I've never seen him jump that high but he might have been being lazy the last twenty or so times I've seen him be made to jump, so what do I know?"

And the argument continued from there with Roxas reverting back to the conversation's original focus of torturing embarrassing information out of his twin and Mrs. Strife continuing on as an impassive observer, giving comments where comments were due.

It carried on like that for awhile, eventually spiraling off into other topics once Sora had finally broken down and given up the bit of information Roxas had been wanting (it ended up that they had started sleeping together two days after becoming 'official'). All in all, it was kind of nice, most of the family was together. Cloud was so far gone that he wasn't offering up his usual snarky comments every two minutes or so, and there was no Leon to egg him on and make a mess of things.

As much as Mrs. Strife loved her two eldest, she did have to say that they had a flair for injecting unnecessary tension and anger into any family situation and it was a pleasant change to have them to where they were unable to do so.

She was just starting to really settle into watching Sora and Roxas discussing their upcoming term paper in English when the front door slammed open: effectively announcing Leon's arrival.

Cloud leaped up almost instantaneously and had launched himself over the back of the couch before the swinging door even had the chance to hit the wall. In fact, Mrs. Strife had barely had time to register that there was someone turning the doorknob before Cloud was up and moving, some sort of innate sense of his allowing him to know when his prey was within sniping range. Roxas and Sora just stared after him in stunned silence as the sounds of a muffled conversation began to float in from the entryway. They hadn't seen their older brother move that fast in forever. Hell, they couldn't even remember a time when they had seen him react so quickly, and Roxas said as much as it became clear that Cloud and Leon were not about to grace them with their presence any time soon.

"Well, he did say that he was waiting to yell at him." Mrs. Strife pointed out. "I'm sure he knew that if I got my claws into him first then he'd never see the light of day. Cloud can be awfully motivated when he thinks someone is about to steal his thunder."

"I'm sure he just didn't want to hear you go on about margin size and spacing any longer, Roxas." Sora quipped. "And for that matter, I don't think _I_ want to hear you go on about margin size and spacing. Just do the paper and screw the margins. It's not like they ever really count off for it so long as it looks like it might be close."

"You have been so sarcastic lately." Roxas shook his head but was unable to hide the wide grin on his face. "I'm proud. You have finally learned."

"Roxas, is it really necessary to corrupt the only good and well-mannered child I have?" Mrs. Strife asked tensely. "I can't take you anywhere in public and I've _never_ even had the slightest _inclination_ to take your older brothers anywhere, but Sora was always the kid I could show off to my friends. Please don't take that away from me."

"Oh, Mom." Sora sent his mother a reassuring look. "You know I could never embarrass you in public. My brothers, now that's a different story. They deserve every ounce of shame I can heap upon them. I'm just practicing for those moments."

"Well… So long as it's just your brothers you're torturing… I guess I don't have a problem with that…" Mrs. Strife would have said something else but she was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Leon in the doorway, looking slightly wan and pale faced. She immediately leapt to her feet but he brushed her off and took a seat on the recently abandoned couch with his whole family watching him.

There was silence for what felt like the longest of times, but what was really only about a handful of minutes before Mrs. Strife slowly sank back down into her chair and broke it.

"Where's Cloud?"

"He went… out." Leon's voice was about as vague as his statement. It was painfully obvious that something had happened, but Leon didn't seem physically hurt…

"Where did he go?"

Mrs. Strife pressed on in her questioning, knowing that if it were left up to her adopted son, they would never find out what it was that had him so shaken up.

"To handle something… I told him not to go." Mrs. Strife furrowed her brow in worry at that. She couldn't even begin to think of what could have happened that would have required Cloud to leave to go handle on his own. She also couldn't think of anything that would have Leon acting so strangely.

"What did he go out to handle?"

"He just needed to talk to someone I guess. Or threaten them. He didn't say which… I told him not to go." Leon stared blankly at his mother as though trying to make her fill in the blank on her own and not make him say whatever it was that was stressing him out so badly.

"I gathered as much… Exactly _who_ is he going to talk to or threaten that you didn't want him to talk to... or threaten?"

"My father."

* * *

There had been a time years and years ago when Leon had first started working at the bakery that the three owners had created a little game to keep themselves entertained during lulls in business. In fact, it had been Laguna who had thought of it and who had been brave enough to try it out for the first time, but the other two had been more than happy to embrace it once it had been proven not to piss Leon off.

The game was fairly simple: They knew Leon had a boyfriend and they knew the basics about Leon's boyfriend (average height, blonde hair, blue eyes), and they also had the intuition to know that Leon hadn't told his boyfriend about where he was working. Not that they wouldn't have done the same in his position (Telling one's significant other that one works in an erotic bakery generally doesn't go over well for the most part. In fact, they had lost quite a few workers over the years due to that.), but it did make guessing which blonde teen strolling down the street was Cloud out to hunt down where Leon disappeared to after school all the more entertaining.

So while Ward was sitting in the front of the shop while Kiros tried to diffuse a mentally melting Laguna (who had apparently let slip some big secret to someone that was going to ruin his life, but that wasn't important enough for his business partners to know about), he slipped away into his old habit of people watching, always keeping an eye out for any blonde that looked to be about to right age to be Leon's mysterious lover.

He had been at this for an hour when the blonde walked in, an unreadable look on his face and determination in his crystal clear blue eyes, and Ward considered the option that he might be the blonde they had been looking for, for pretty much the past seven years before figuring that he couldn't be the one if only for the fact that Cloud really didn't know where Leon had worked and the odds of him wandering in here for no reason other than to buy a sexually explicit cake were pretty much zero.

"Is Laguna here?" There was something about the way the stranger asked his seemingly innocent question that suddenly had Ward on edge. It wouldn't be the first time that someone had come into the shop looking for nothing more than to beat its owner into the ground for one thing or another. Generally the absentminded brunette deserved what was coming to him, but that didn't mean his friends would stand down and just let anyone and everyone do whatever they wanted so long as there was reasonable doubt.

So Ward remained silent and put a mildly confused face on, gesturing to between them and then back to his ear, trying to communicate that he hadn't heard what the stranger had said because he was deaf.

"You're not deaf." To Ward's credit he didn't allow the unmanly squeak that had suddenly appeared in his throat to actually make it all the way out, but he wasn't quite able to stop his eyes from jumping out of his head. "Just because one cannot speak, does not mean one cannot hear. I'm assuming that since you wanted me to think that you didn't understand me Laguna is here and you just don't want me to talk to him. I'm also assuming that, since he is here, that he is behind the only other door in this place. If you don't mind, I would like to see him now and I would prefer if I didn't have to go busting into an employee's only area if I don't have to."

"Holy fucking hell you're Cloud!" Ward turned around rather quickly for a man of his size at the sound of Laguna's panicked voice to find the man himself standing in the open doorway with Kiros looking cautiously over his shoulder. "Please don't kill me!"

"I'll consider your request, but I'm not giving you any guarantees." Cloud made a graceful sweeping motion with his arm and took a step forward. "Is there somewhere that we may speak privately? There is something I would like to discuss with you, and then I'll probably kill you, but I guess it kind of depends on how angry you make me."

Kiros and Ward exchanged looks but when Laguna gave them a weary nod they moved out of Cloud's way so the blonde could make it back into the kitchen area without anything impeding his progress. They watched with mixed feelings of dread as their long time friend shut the stainless steel doors behind him and disappeared, not quite trusting Cloud but finding they kind of wanted to anyways. When Leon had talked about him, he had always been portrayed as someone who was actually a nice guy underneath his tough attitude. For Laguna's sake all they could do was hope that Leon had been right and that whatever it was that Laguna had done, it hadn't been something bad enough to make Cloud _really_ want to kill him.

Back in the kitchen Laguna was not sharing his friends' optimism, mainly because Cloud was now glaring at him in a way that made it seem as though ripping out the older man's larynx wasn't completely out of the question.

"Why the _hell_ would you tell him that you were his father?"

Laguna had been expecting that, and had probably deserved it, but that didn't mean what he had done was wrong. In fact, he was starting to think more and more that his sudden lapse in judgment wasn't a lapse at all and that he finally come to his senses after years of being wrong.

"I don't know…" Laguna offered up an insincere shrug. "Maybe because I _am_ his father, and I think he has every right to know that."

"You never thought he had any need to know about it before." Cloud pointed out and Laguna cringed. Okay, that one had been a bit below the belt in the brunette's opinion, not that Cloud had ever been portrayed as the type who cared about where his blows landed so long as he got his way in the end. "He was perfectly okay with thinking his real father was dead. Actually, he was perfectly okay looking to you as a father figure to help him through all the stuff my mom and I couldn't. I was under the impression that you were okay with that as well."

"I was..." Laguna sighed. "I thought I was. I guess I wasn't as okay with it as I thought. How the hell do _you_ know about all of this?"

"I do my research." Cloud crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. "A friend of mine stumbled upon something very interesting on Leon's birth certificate and he decided he needed to share it with me. It took me a few months to figure the rest out from there, but I managed in the end."

"So why didn't _you_ tell him if you were concerned enough to go through all that trouble of looking me up?" Laguna asked quickly, trying desperately to put the other man on the defensive so he could take a moment to regain his bearings. "I thought you were supposed to love him. Wouldn't that mean not keeping secrets from him?"

"Sometimes loving someone means having to keep a few secrets." Cloud shot back just as quickly, apparently bound and determined to make sure that nothing Laguna said would catch him off guard. "Leon is happy with who he is living with. A family that has always been there for him, that has _chosen_ him as opposed to giving him up. There was no reason for him to care about what had become of you so long as he had _us_."

"Well, he's still got you, doesn't he?" Laguna was starting to get tired of defending himself to some boy he'd never met before. He hadn't asked for Leon to show up in his life again hadn't planned for it and hadn't thought he'd wanted it until it had happened and Cloud was just going to have to get over that. "Honestly, I don't see what the problem is. Squall was bound to find out about sooner or later and now we can all work through this and he'll come out of it with a real father if that's what he ends up wanting."

"You have no right to call him by that name." Cloud scoffed. "You gave up that right when you gave him up. There isn't going to be any going back on it now that he's shown up and you've missed out on all the hard parts of him growing up. He's done just fine without a father up until this point and he'll be always perfectly okay without one. You don't need a dad to be happy."

"I think that's something we're both going to have to let Leon decide on his own without any interference from us." Laguna leant back against one of the silver countertops. He had never been one for confrontations and he was actually proud of himself for lasting as long as he was when Cloud was clearly not the type of person who came into a conversation with any thought of changing his mind. "Have you even bothered talking to him about this, I mean _really _talking not just pushing him to the side because your opinion was more important?"

"You don't know shit about me." Cloud growled out but Laguna could tell that he had finally hit a nerve that could be used to get out of his situation.

"I know a lot more about you than you would think." Laguna pushed himself up off the counter as the stirrings of confidence began to rise up in him. "Leon might not be one for talking much about his personal life, but he's said more than enough in a little under eight years of knowing him to tell me that you tend to jump right into things without bothering to consult with the people you are supposedly helping. Why should I think that right now is any different?"

"Because it's none of your damn business, that's why." Cloud's voice had dropped down to far below menacing and well into a territory that Laguna did not have any experience with.

If Laguna were to hazard a guess he would have to say that it was a very intense struggle within this young man not to simply reach out and choke the other man to death. Considering all the stories he'd heard about how Cloud was generally a 'punch first ask questions later' type person, Laguna was just about ready to end this discussion once and for all before whatever it was that was holding Cloud back from killing him disappeared.

"Fine, it isn't any of my damn business." Cloud's eyes widen a fraction at that and Laguna congratulated himself for managing to catch this insane person off-guard for the second time. "Look, quite frankly, I don't _care_ what it is that you think and if you really are here on Leon's behalf and not your own then good for you… But I would rather like to talk to _Leon_ about this, so you can pass that message along to him when you get home… Or don't. Whatever works for you, but we're not going to get anywhere going on like this."

Cloud looked like he wanted to say something to that, he really did, but he apparently either thought better of it or just couldn't bring himself to care because all he did was send Laguna the most evil glare he had ever seen in his life and turned on his heel and left, the steel doors swinging open forcefully in his wake with Kiros and Ward scattering to get out of his way.

There was a moment when it looked as though Cloud was about to pause and Laguna sucked in a rather large breath hoping that the other man hadn't thought of something else to bring up (or had finally given into his obvious urge to beat the stupid out of Laguna), but he didn't so much as spare the slightest of glances back before walking out once and for all.

In his wake he left behind one hell of a silence as Kiros and Ward watched Laguna warily for any sign that he was going to give in and tell them exactly what it was that had Cloud finally seeking them out. The brown-haired man in question merely rested against one of the open steel doors and massaged his left calf absentmindedly, not quite sure how to start a conversation that was going to fast become rather serious so soon after having the ever living shit scared out of him by a man half his age.

In the end, it turned out to be not quite as hard as he had thought since his friends were considerably more supportive than the angry blonde that had just left them. Of course that didn't mean that he wasn't going to have to find a way to fix this now… He just didn't quite know where to start.

Maybe it was time for him to start getting addresses for his employees.

* * *

The second Cloud opened the door to his mother's house he knew something was wrong. It was dead silent for one thing, something that never happened. Even when there was no one visiting, his mother generally had a radio playing or the TV going at all times. More than once he had caught her just leaving the blender running while she knitted in the living room. She was very much the kind of woman that didn't like the quiet because it reminded her of how much she missed her children.

So since he was faced with a literal wall of silence he immediately jumped to the correct conclusion: Something was or had gone wrong and he didn't think he wanted to know what it was. It didn't help that today _so_ was not the day for anything else to happen.

Cloud now had two options. He could always go up to his and Leon's room and hide until someone came home and he could use the opportunity to spy and see exactly what it was that was going on, or he could turn around and run back to the dorm in the hopes that whatever had happened didn't have anything to do with him and that it would go away on its own without him having to interfere.

His insatiable curiosity lead him to choose option one, even though the instincts he quite often ignored were screaming at him that it was a bad idea all the way up the stairs.

Cloud knew he had made a mistake the second he opened the door to his room only to find Leon glaring at him from behind his desk. Cloud groaned and kicked the doorframe in frustration. He should have known it wasn't going to be as easy as confronting Leon's dad and convincing him to go away. It never was.

"Damn it! We're going to have to have a conversation about this, aren't we?"

"That is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say." There wasn't even the slightest hint of humor in Leon's voice and Cloud felt something at the base of his spine stiffen. This wasn't looking good. He should have run when he had the chance. "Why didn't you tell me? It's obvious you've known about this for quite some time, so why didn't you think that I needed to know about it?

"You've done perfectly fine all on your own up until now. I didn't think you needed to know." Cloud knew he had said something completely dumb the second the words left his mouth, but he never had been the type to take his words back once they'd been said. "You don't need a dad to have a good life."

"It doesn't matter whether I _need_ one or not. It should be _my _choice as to whether I _want _one." Leon pointed out quickly as Cloud still hovered nervously in the doorway, not wanting to give up the option of turning and running just yet. "You never once stopped to think about whether I might've liked to have had a father to be there for me. You also never stopped to ask if I _didn't_ want one either. You just naturally came to whatever stupid ass conclusion you came to and made up your mind to twist this around to have it end up however _you _wanted it to end up and damn what anyone else thought!"

"I didn't think you would fucking _care_." Cloud managed to ground out through teeth clenched so tight they were starting to hurt. "You never once attempted to see if your father was still out there somewhere. You never once said anything about wanting to know what happened to him. I just assumed that since you didn't care, then you wouldn't give a shit either way. I guess I was fucking wrong. Alert the fucking media because I was wrong again. Whoop de frickin' doo."

Leon took in a deep breath, the air whistling through his teeth as he attempted to get a better hold on the conversation at hand. "Look, you still lied to me and I still don't know why. Before we go around in circles for two hours and get nothing done, would you at least like to let me know up front if you're going to tell me your motives behind what you did or if I'm better off just coming to my own conclusions?"

"I don't have to tell you a god damned thing." Cloud shot back as he took a step away from the open door. "Fuck, Leon, this whole damn thing is beyond stupid. You call me stubborn, but I know you've already made up your damn mind about this issue and there is nothing I can say or do to change it so why don't _you_ tell _me_ what it is that you want to hear so that I can just go fucking home? I have a fuckton of homework to do from when you were in the hospital and I would like to get that done sometime before I have to go to class tomorrow."

Leon just shook his head and Cloud took that a sign that he could finally make his escape. He turned to go and ran face first into his mother who he hadn't seen standing down the hall with the most disappointed look on her face that he ever remembered seeing.

"Now, I know you are not running away from your problems and leaving them to fester on their own, now are you?" Cloud sighed heavily and shook his head, slumping his shoulders forward and turning around to re-enter his room, ignoring Leon's look of surprise and then horror when he caught sight of the reason why his angry boyfriend had returned and was now sitting at his desk with a look akin to a kicked puppy on his face.

"Mom!" Leon tried to once again gather his wits together for what had to have been the third time that day. Any more surprises and he was sure that his heart wasn't going to survive. "I thought you left with the twins."

"Of course I didn't." Mrs. Strife answered matter of factly. "They don't need me to hold their hands to get them through this. They have boyfriends for that. You two, on the other hand, are the two most stubborn, most un-talkative people I know. I knew better than to think that you would be able to resolve this on your own, as much as it pains me to admit it."

"Mom, this really isn't any of your business…" Leon immediately shut his mouth at the sight of the powerful glare his adopted mother had formed at those words. "Okay, so maybe it might be a little bit your business…."

"It's a hell of a lot my business." Mrs. Strife responded as she shut the door behind her and leant back against it, surveying where her two sons were now trying to look everywhere but at her or each other. "So Leon, you can be the first to answer one of my questions. Why are you really so mad at Cloud?"

"Because he knew my father was alive for god knows how long and never fucking said anything, that's why!" Leon clenched his hands into fists and pushed them against the sides of his legs in an effort not to hit anything.

"And how do you know how long Cloud has known this?"

Leon visibly recoiled at that. His mother had a point. Not once had Cloud told him exactly how long it was he had known. For all Leon knew it could have been days and Cloud had only been looking for the right opportunity to say something. Of course, from what Cloud had been saying before, that was highly unlikely, but that still didn't mean Leon might have been a little premature in jumping to place the blame.

"Cloud, how long _have _you known about Leon's father?" Mrs. Strife turned to look at her eldest next, resisting the urge to sigh as he stared stubbornly at the wall and refused to make eye contact.

"I'd say about five years now, maybe a bit less." Almost as though he could sense Leon's horrified look he went on. "Sephiroth came to me a few months after graduation when he had been volunteering at the hospital and showed me something about Leon's birth certificate that didn't add up. I put him off by agreeing to become his friend again and then I went searching around. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would have been since you'd been working for the damn man for about three years by that time."

"How the hell did you know where I worked!?" Leon was trying very hard not to yell, knowing that yelling would accomplish very little, but it was a difficult struggle that he was starting to lose with each passing second. "I never even told _Mom_ that!"

"Of fucking _course_ I knew you were illegally working in an erotic bakery." Cloud scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest, daring to shoot a disbelieving look in Leon's general direction. "What kind of boyfriend do you think I _am_?"

"The kind who didn't care to check up on me I guess." Leon answered sheepishly. "Why the hell didn't you say anything about it? You just let me go to work every day without saying a damn word."

"You obviously didn't want me knowing about it for some reason." Cloud answered. "Who was I to push you to give up something you plainly didn't want to give? If loving and caring about you meant I had to let you keep a secret or two, then that was fine by me. So long as you were happy I didn't give a shit whether you were a stripper or a crack dealer or whatever the hell else you wanted to be."

As much as he wanted to, Leon couldn't quite find something to say to that.

"Look, you have both made mistakes here." Mrs. Strife pointed out calmly as once again her two sons tried to look at everything in the room that wasn't a person. "In fact, I don't think there has ever been a time when one or both of you haven't said, done, or hidden something that you ended up regretting. Granted, this might be a bit more on the serious side than some of those other times, but the fact still remains that neither of you are pillars of morality over here. So the sooner you both get it through your thick skulls that you are capable of making the wrong decisions in your lives, the sooner we can get to the real issue underneath all of this and the sooner you two can go back to your regularly scheduled lives."

"Mom, there's nothing to really discuss here." Cloud offered up a weak shrug as he made a last ditch attempt to talk his way out of an uncomfortable situation. "I should have told him what I knew a long time ago, but I didn't. Does it really matter why?"

"Stop copping out and get to the damn point already." Leon muttered just loud enough for both Cloud and his mother to hear. "It's not like she's going to give up even _if_ I were to say that I wasn't mad at you anymore…"

"That's not going to work, Squall, and you know it." Mrs. Strife took a step forward into the room. Neither boy looked away from their determined study of the wall closest to them. "You two may not still be mad at each other, but if we don't get whatever was bothering you out in the open and resolved now, one of you will bring it up again in a future argument and then you'll be even worse off than you are now. Don't even try and say that I'm wrong. That would be an insult to _all _of our intelligences."

"So how the hell do _you_ know there was some deeper motivation to what I did?" Cloud finally chose to acknowledge his mother's presence, but the glare he was sending her almost made her wish he would look back at the wall some more. "For all you know, I was just being a selfish asshole or a power-hungry jerk. I don't tell people things for whatever reason seems good enough to me at the time. This is not a new thing here, and I don't need you trying to make up some kind of sentimental shit to go along with all the other fucking problems I deal with, okay?"

Now both Leon and Mrs. Strife were staring at him with something akin to vague horror on their faces and Cloud couldn't blame them. He had never in all his twenty-three years spoken to his mother like that. Sure he'd argued with her, and he had never been one to pass up an opportunity to sprinkle curse words into just about anything he said, but he had never once talked back to her. He had never once insinuated that she didn't know what he was feeling. That was too much like accusing her of not caring for either of their tastes. He'd also raised his voice. Yelling just wasn't something he _did_.

Cloud rose up to his feet and shook his head slowly as he tried to clear away all the traitorous emotions that had him wanting to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness right then and there. Mrs. Strife moved out of the way automatically as he walked past her to the door, opening it and pausing in the doorway.

"I'm going to go now… You two can hate me all you want, but I'm not taking it back. It's nobody's business what I think and why I do the things I do so you can both go fuck off."

And with that he was gone, leaving the stunned forms of his mother and lover behind to stare blankly at each other as they desperately searched in their minds for the courage to run after him. It was a losing battle and Mrs. Strife sank down onto the nearest bed as the unmistakable sounds of Cloud revving his motorcycle's engine filled the empty silence he had left behind.

"What the hell is _his_ problem?" Leon was the first one to break the uncomfortable silence. He had always known that Cloud was a private person. Hell, you didn't have to spend more than two minutes with the other man to know that, but in all his years of knowing the blonde he had never once hit a point where Cloud outright refused to tell him what was wrong. He quite often had to pry whatever it is was out of Cloud with the blonde kicking and screaming and dragging his heels the whole way, but there had never come a time when he had just up and walked away without offering so much as a tiny explanation.

"He doesn't want to talk about this." Mrs. Strife answered much more calmly than she felt. "I don't think it helped that we kind of ambushed him."

"I didn't even know you were here. I thought you had gone to get ice cream with the twins like you said you would." Leon knew that pointing this out didn't mean anything since Cloud wasn't there to hear his excuses, nor would he have believed them even if he had been. "He's not acting like himself, but I don't think it had anything to do with the ambush."

"No, though I'm sure it couldn't have helped his mood any." Mrs. Strife admitted. "There is more to why he felt the need to run away than being trapped in a corner."

"Too bad he didn't feel the sudden urge to tell us about it before he turned tail and ran off into the sunset." Leon mumbled dejectedly. A part of him knew that he should still be mad, that Cloud had crossed way too far over the line with his latest attempt at protecting a family member, but that part wasn't really in charge any longer. As much as he wanted to claim otherwise, Cloud really had thought that he was helping. Granted, Leon didn't quite know what the blonde had been hoping to accomplish, but he hadn't gone into this without thinking for once. He had only been protecting Leon in one of the only ways he knew how since talking out his issues never was an option until it was almost too late to matter.

"You really don't get what's bothering him?" Mrs. Strife asked incredulously. "It's obvious. He didn't want to tell you about your father because he was worried that you were going to leave us once you knew you still had a living relative out there that wanted you. Also, he's never really understood why it is that people enjoy having fathers so much since his was pretty much a dick that was never here and that wanted nothing to do with Cloud at all. I have to admit that part of that might be my fault, but it still doesn't change the facts. Edward wasn't there for Cloud when he was younger. He was too busy fighting a war because it made him happy to mess with the child he had left behind and the one time he was allowed back home, he spent a total of maybe two hours with Cloud."

"And then he died." Leon finished for her. He had heard _that_ part of the story at least. Cloud's dad, the honored war hero who had died in the line of duty, tragically leaving behind a pregnant wife and one son. The rest, however, he hadn't known about at all. "Was it really all that bad? I mean, I know Cloud was young and all that, so he couldn't have really _remembered_ his dad enough to hate him so much that he figured everyone was better off living without a male influence."

"He remembers more than enough." Mrs. Strife stated. "It's very hard to get the image of your father telling you that you were better off playing with the neighborhood kids because he was far too busy going out with his friends to spend time with you, even if you are not quite two yet. But that's not all of it, Leon. You two have been friends almost from the moment you met with your little fight notwithstanding. Surely you had to know that there was more than a stubborn personality to rival his that drew you two together."

Leon shook his head. He hadn't really given it a lot of thought back then. All he remembered was that there was a kid who wasn't afraid to fight for what he wanted and Leon had respected that even though he had been too young to really know what respect was.

"You were the same to put it as simply as possible." Mrs. Strife pinched the bridge of her nose and crossed her legs, unable to stay still. "You had Matron and he had me, and in the end you both had both of us, but neither of you had a father figure. You both grew up pretty much on your own. You didn't want to lean on us women too much the way Sora and Roxas would, so you leaned on each other. Maybe that's not the way you saw it, but that's undoubtedly the way he did in a way, even if he won't acknowledge that to himself. Now that you've got a father ready and waiting in the wings he's afraid that you're not going to need him any longer. He can say whatever the hell he likes to the contrary, but he likes being needed, being wanted, just as much as you do and he's terrified of anything that might take that away from him."

"To be perfectly honest with you, I'm almost afraid of that myself. It is an honor to be loved by someone that really has no obligation to love you and maybe I can understand where Cloud's coming from a little bit better than you because… Well, because I kind of share his fear…" Mrs. Strife opened her eyes and turned to look at where Leon was staring at her with a blank expression of shock on his face. "You're not going to be mad at me, too, are you?"

"No, Mom, of course not." Leon ran a hand through his bangs in a mixture of frustration and confusion. "To be completely honest with you, too, I'm not mad at Cloud anymore either. He is a jealous and possessive asshole all things considered, but I've known that for years. I guess I kind of was taken off guard by just _how_ jealous and possessive he could be, but I've come to peace with his insecurities over the years enough to not take this personally. I just got mad, you know? I should have been quite as harsh as I was, though. Nobody deserves that."

"Don't protect him." Mrs. Strife seemed to be a bit more cheerful and that in turn made Leon's mood perk up a bit. "You had every right to pour the guilt on in this case, regardless of what Cloud may or may not have been thinking. He's going to have to grow up and accept his responsibilities sooner or later and I'd rather it be sooner, but I do hope that you'll go and find him and maybe talk this out a little bit more… Or at least as much of it as he is willing to talk to you about."

"He's not going to want to say more than two words to me at the moment and I'd bet you anything I know what those two words are going to be: 'Fuck off.'"

"Oh, sweetheart, you know I don't make fool's bets."

* * *

"Fuck off, Leon."

"Damn. I was off by a word." Leon had finally managed to corner Cloud in the hall of their dorm. It had taken about half the day and for some reason the blonde had finally been located a floor _above_ their actual room, but Leon was so relieved to have finally caught up to him that he didn't even bother to think about why or where Cloud had been sulking. "I know you don't want to talk to me right now, but I really think we should at least call an official truce or something."

"I don't have to do anything." Cloud stated tensely, focusing on a spot over Leon's left shoulder, probably planning an escape at the first distraction to present itself. "Besides I'm perfectly okay with avoiding you for the rest of my life."

"I don't think that's going to work… You do have to sleep sometime and I have the keys to pretty much everywhere your stuff is." Leon pointed out. "I would hope that you wouldn't stoop to crashing on friend's couches and sleeping on the streets for the rest of your life in order to avoid me."

"You don't know my life." Cloud replied stubbornly.

"Cloud, this isn't something that is going to go away, but I've thought through most of the issues I had with what happened and I'm offering a no strings attached truce here." Leon held up his hands in surrender. "We're going to have to talk this whole shit out someday, but I'm promising you right here and now that I'm over it and I'm not going to get mad at you about it ever again."

"And what if I were to say that I didn't believe you and that this is all a clever ploy to get me in private where you will then proceed to break up with me once and for all?" Cloud paused for a second. "You're probably going to burn all my worldly possessions as well because you're spiteful like that."

"Why the hell would I want to burn your shit?"

"Spite. I thought I said that."

"Hm, so you did." Leon sighed deeply and resisted the urge to pinch the bride of his nose, knowing that taking his eyes off his boyfriend at the moment would result in Cloud running off into the sunset never to be seen again. "I don't want to fight with you anymore, and I don't want to break up. I really do just want to talk. I would like to know _your _opinion on this whole Laguna deal before I do anything. That is what couples are supposed to do, right? They're supposed to ask each other's opinions when it comes to the hard stuff, aren't they?"

Cloud seemed to ponder this for a second. "I guess _normal_ couples would… But we're not normal."

"That's a bullshit excuse for continuing a stupid grudge."

"No it's not. I think it's the perfect excuse."

"So you're going to continue to hold a grudge with me because it's what normal people wouldn't do, and, not wanting to appear normal to _one_ person, that's the only reason why you are refusing to talk to me….?"

Cloud shifted his weight from right to left uncomfortably, but nodded none the less.

"That's bullshit."

"Well, what do you _want _me to say?" Cloud asked defensively. "I don't like it when you're mad at me, but I don't like it even more when you aren't either!"

"Cloud, that makes no sense." Leon gave in to the urge to run his hand through his already messy hair.

"It makes perfect sense." Cloud crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground. "At least when you're mad at me you come right out say what you want. True, you don't say it very nicely, and you have raised your voice to me on multiple occasions, but at least I know where you stand. When you're like this, I don't know what to think. I know you're upset and I want to do something about it, but I don't know what you _want_. Do you want to be angry with me? Do you _really_ want to forgive me? I don't know what you're thinking and that drives me fucking _crazy_!"

"Right now I'm thinking that we should really be having this argument inside the dorm and not out where any random passerby can listen in." Leon pointed out, quickly realizing the Cloud needed to vent for his sanity as well as everyone else's. "As for anything else, yeah, I'm pissed at you and I am going to be for the foreseeable future, but I really do want your opinion on this and I'm not going to throw everything away just because you made one mistake. Okay, so you've made a lot of mistakes, but so have I and I would like to think that you've forgiven me for all the stupid shit I've done to piss _you_ off over the years. I'm not about to throw away years of a good relationship for some fucking incident that we can't just work through if you would only _talk_ to me."

"I don't like talking. I never say anything right." Cloud's shoulders slumped. "Look, I'm just not a 'talk it through' kind of guy, but we can go back down to the dorm if you want. Hopefully I can manage to say at least _one_ thing that doesn't make me sound like a retarded toddler on crack."

Leon sighed in relief. It might not have been much to a casual observer, but Cloud agreeing to go with him was a huge step for the blonde. If they managed to make it down to the dorm without Cloud running away at his first chance to do so, then they just might have a chance to work something out once and for all.

Luckily for Leon, they did make it, though there was a moment when Cloud looked longingly at the flight of stairs below the floor their room was on when Leon thought he was about to put all his running skills to good use in order to catch the other man.

Doubly luckily for Leon, Cloud didn't notice that there was a person waiting for them in the room once they got there or he would have been long gone before Leon had even realized something was wrong. In fact, it wasn't until this person decided to make their presence known that Cloud realized there was something wrong with the picture he was looking at, but by that time it was too late. The door had been closed and firmly locked behind him, effectively trapping himself in what was fast becoming one of his worst nightmares.

"Hello, boys…"

And then the guilty chorus of boys who knew they had done wrong:

"Hello, Mom…"

"I can't believe you didn't tell me that she was going to be in here." Cloud whispered urgently as Mrs. Strife was currently occupied with rifling through their shared closet.

"She followed me; there wasn't anything I could do." Leon whispered back, just as disconcerted by his mother's appearance as his boyfriend. "I didn't think she had come up here. I just thought she was going to look for Sora and Roxas."

"I did find your brothers, but they were coping just fine on their own." Mrs. Strife turned around to send her boys a mild disapproving look at the disheveled state of their closet (which considering it had been Cloud who had been in charge of the cleaning for the past three weeks since Leon had been incapacitated, wasn't as bad as it could have been). "You two, on the other hand, are in dire need of some motherly affection. So spill, Cloud. What are you upset about this time?"

"Motherly affection my ass. More like you couldn't bear to keep your big nose out of our business." Cloud grumbled to himself, but he straightened up a bit from his perch next to Leon on the brunette's bed. "I'm not upset about anything anymore. Now I think I just want a rather large alcoholic beverage, a trip to somewhere that is miles away from here, and a twelve hour nap. Not necessarily in that order."

"I second that motion." Leon muttered under his breath.

"Motion seconded, but denied." Mrs. Strife cut in quickly before either one of them could get in another snarky comment. "You two are the most compatible people I have ever met in my life. It takes something special to go from childhood friends into a substantial relationship, and to have done it so naturally that none of your friends or family noticed unless you came straight out and told them? That's insane. That is so far beyond insane that if I hadn't been here to witness it myself, I probably would have called bullshit."

"There is nothing I can really say that hasn't already been said about fifty times by now, but I do think that you two need to think about what you're going to do about this. Talking isn't really going to work, not for you two, but neither is ignoring it and hoping it's going to go away." Mrs. Strife shook her head in frustration as both Leon and Cloud shrugged. "What _do_ you do when you get in a situation like this?"

"Have sex."

"Cloud Edward Strife-Leonhart! That is the most vulgar thing I think I have ever heard you say and I do _NOT_ appreciate it!" Cloud flinched a bit under his mother's scathing glare, but remarkably didn't back down.

"It's true." Cloud shrugged again. "We're guys, it's how we communicate. No offense, but talking is for girls."

Leon nodded vigorously. "It's true. What? You thought we were coming back here to discuss the way we felt about this? I'm sure we would have tried, but more than likely it wouldn't have made much of a difference."

"I had hoped you might have given that option some thought." Mrs. Strife answered weakly. "Please don't tell me that _sex_ is the great secret behind why your relationship has worked for as long as it has despite everything you two have been through."

"Fine, I won't tell you." Cloud answered.

"That has got to be the most shallow thing I have ever heard." Mrs. Strife truly seemed confused at the way her sons were treating this newest matter with a bored nonchalance that made it seem as though they really _didn't_ see anything wrong with solving their differences with sex.

"It works for us." Leon answered smoothly. "I'm good at speaking, but I am very bad at saying what I really feel, I don't know whether _that's_ a guy thing or whether that's just me, but it's the truth. Cloud… Well, let's just say Cloud doesn't have much verbal input in anything unless he's making a snide remark. We connect better on the physical level. It's very hard to hide what you're feeling when you're _that_ close to a person."

Mrs. Strife considered this for a moment before sighing heavily and leaning back against the wall in defeat. "I don't think I am ever going to fully understand the both of you, but I guess I kind of see where you're coming from at least where this is concerned. That doesn't mean I agree with you or that I condone your policy of not logically discussing what is bothering you, but I'm not going to be the one to nit-pick your relationship into infinity. You've got your entire college campus doing that for me already."

"True fucking story." Cloud rolled his shoulders back and stretched his arms over his head. "Anyways, Leon, I don't care what you do. So long as you are happy with your life I can live with it. We cool?"

"We cool."

Mrs. Strife made a disbelieving humph in the back of her throat and looked at her sons sternly. "And how do either of you know whether you're telling the truth or not?"

"That's where the sex comes in. You see…"

"Stop right there, Cloud. I don't want to know anymore." Mrs. Strife held a hand up as though she were trying to physically stop her eldest from continuing. "So what are you going to do about your father, Leon?"

Leon raised one shoulder in a half-assed shrug. "Dunno. I guess I'll have to think about it for a few days and then decide from there."

"You just do what you think is best, sweetie." Mrs. Strife cooed, quickly slipping into her nurturing mother mode. "I may not have liked a lot of the choices you have made in your life, but I have never been one to step in and interfere when it was something that you truly seemed to take pride in."

There was more to what Mrs. Strife had wanted to say, in fact, there was a rather eloquent speech on the virtues of taking a step back and evaluating situations before making a move that she had formed on the drive over to campus, but she suddenly realized that she was never going to get the chance to deliver it if the way her children were looking at each other was any indication. In fact, she was pretty sure that she could have just announced that she was really an alien from outer space and they wouldn't have so much as flicked an eye in her general direction. She was actually beginning to become a bit uncomfortable as well if all truths were to be told. As much as she loved her children and were proud of them for finding matches that would make them happy, she was just as uncomfortable as any mother at witnessing their displays of public affection and the way Cloud and Leon were looking at each other had gone far beyond public affection and well into a realm she did _not_ want to think about where her own flesh and blood were concerned.

"So I'm going to leave then." Mrs. Strife announced after an awkward pause that seemed to stretch on forever (but was really only about a minute). Cloud and Leon looked over at her in mild surprise almost as though they had completely forgotten she was still standing there (which, in a way they had). "Just remember that I love you boys and that I worry about you, and I always will."

"We know, Mom." Leon said seriously. "And we appreciate it. Try not to worry so much, though. I've got it handled, and, whatever you do, please don't try and find out where he is and confront him yourself. I really just want to figure this all out on my own before I decide whether I want him to stick around long enough for you to need to meet him."

Mrs. Strife nodded and went to open the door, more than ready to go home to where she could sit down and do some serious thinking herself. As she passed over the threshold she risked a look back at Leon and Cloud and found that they were once again not paying her the least bit of attention and for that she was almost glad. It hurt her to see them when they were having a disagreement and although it was very rude to ignore a guest when they were standing right in front of you, she was willing to let their slip in manners go if only for the fact that they seemed as though they were quite ready to get over their issues and go back to having the steady, more or less healthy, relationship they had been having for the past nine years.

She couldn't help but murmur one last sentiment under her breath before she left though, more because she was almost ninety-nine percent certain they weren't going to pick up on it anyways.

"Besides, I didn't get mad at you when you went to work for the man in the first place, why would I bother with starting a problem now?"

She didn't even wait to see if her comment had registered and the door clicked shut softly behind her as she went out to _really_ find her twins this time.

* * *

"Well, I would say we're good now, wouldn't you?" Leon sounded a bit out of breath but considering they had been rather busy for the past hour or so it was understandable and expected.

"I would say so, yes." Cloud answered back after a split second pause. In his opinion they were quite a bit beyond good at the moment, but he didn't really have the breath to argue that point for the time being.

They lay there for a few minutes after that in which talking was subconsciously banned while they attempted to get their bodies back under control, and then Leon spoke up again.

"Did Mom say something when she was leaving?"

"I don't think so." Cloud answered as he flexed his calf muscles absentmindedly, enjoying the cool sheets whispering against his bare legs. "Can't say I was paying her much attention though. I'm sure we'll get yelled at about that sooner or later."

"I'm sure we will." Leon shifted his torso a bit in mild agitation. "I could have sworn she said something though. Something important…"

Cloud grunted in acknowledgement, but didn't care enough to respond.

"You really aren't helping here, you know."

"I don't care enough to want to help you." Cloud mumbled sleepily into his boyfriend's shoulder. "If it had been something she wanted for us to know, she would have gotten our attentions before saying it. Not everything's a test you know."

"Do you even know who I'm talking about?" Leon asked incredulously. "Everything _is_ a test with her."

"Leon, let it drop. It was probably nothing." Cloud was now starting to become a bit irritated. It was so like Leon to take what should have been a relaxing moment and turn it into a game of twenty questions. "Like I said, if it was something important she would have gotten our attentions before saying it, and, if it really was something she wanted us to know about and for whatever reason we didn't hear it like she thought we would, she will bring it up again. It's not like her to let something like that slip in undetected."

"Something like what?" Cloud internally cursed at how unbelievably sharp his boyfriend was right after sex. All Cloud wanted to do was _sleep_ damn it. "Hey, open your eyes. You know something, don't you?"

"Fuck, Leon. If I tell you will you let me sleep already?" Cloud asked grumpily. He had to remind himself forcefully that, yes, he did love the other man, even enough to put up with him when he would rather not. It was a sad reminder, but it was one he utilized anyways. He'd come far too close to losing Leon for one day to fuck it up now because he didn't want to answer a stupid question that didn't mean anything.

Leon seemed to think this proposition over for a moment, clearly fighting against his overwhelming sense of curiosity and the knowledge that he was very unlikely to let the subject drop once it been brought up, even to let Cloud go to bed the way he was begging to. Finally he gave in, the need to know was greater than the need to follow up on the answer.

"Fine, just tell me."

"She said something about how she let you work for your dad for all this time, so why would she have a problem with him now." Cloud slumped bonelessly against the pillows and resolved to ignore anything and everything that could come out of his boyfriend's mouth at that point in favor of falling in unconsciousness.

But he resolution was for naught because he couldn't help but add in one more sarcastic comment before drifting off when Leon exclaimed in exactly the way Cloud had predicted he would…

"How the hell did she _know_ about that!?"

"Just what kind of mother do you think she is?"

* * *

_**A/N: **Oh, if only we can all make-up like that and have life be cool again. Alas, tis not to be. Anyways... Fingers crossed to a quick update and many, many reviews, yes? Pleases?_

* * *


	15. Day TwoHundredSixteen: Fool Me Once

_**A/N: **Damn... I didn't mean for this to be this long but it wouldn't stop. It grew and it grew and the next thing I knew it was twenty five pages long and I thought I was about ready to cry if I didn't get it up and off my chest. Not to mention the fact that because of it's monsterous length, I didn't get it up as soon as I wanted to._

_In other news... I don't really like this chapter all that much... Mainly because I'm a perfectionist, but upon reading and rereading I didn't find anything wrong with it at all. I guess it's just a weird creativity thing... Whatevs. Hopefully ya'll will enjoy it and that's all that matters in the long run. Woot._

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**_Chapter Twelve:_**

_**Day Two-Hundred and Sixteen: Coinkydink? I think not!**_

"I don't trust anything _anyone_ says today, least of all you, Axel." Roxas was standing in the center of the North Quad with his hands on his hips and a disbelieving scowl set on his face. Axel on the other hand, was as calm as could be sitting in one of the many iron-work chairs scattered around the area with a look of bored indifference plastered on his usually expressive face. "Do you even _know_ what today is?"

"April Fool's day of course." Axel answered absentmindedly. Of course he knew what day it was. Excepting Christmas and his own birthday, today was his favorite holiday of all time. What that had to do with what he was trying to tell his boyfriend was a mystery to him. "That doesn't mean what I'm trying to tell you isn't any less true. Trust me, when I'm attempting to prank you, you're going to know about it. Besides, I like having sex with you. I might be a bit stupid but I'm not an _idiot_ thank you very much."

Roxas was very tempted to mutter something creative under his breath about exactly how big of an idiot Axel really was but refrained at the last second because he liked having sex, too, and he found that if he insulted an already serious Axel that the redhead found no objection to withholding his body. Instead he sighed and merely looked at his boyfriend wearily, trying to come to terms with the fact that he would indeed be bored enough to come up with yet another conspiracy theory where his older brothers and their would-be relationship was concerned.

"Fine, I'm listening. What the hell is it that you find so very important that you couldn't have waited until tonight when I'm not already late for my morning class?"

"As if you need to sit in on the lecture to pass Organic Chemistry?" Axel scoffed. "You've got the highest thing to a perfect score you can get in that hellhole and you've barely taken the time to glance over your anally retentive notes."

"Doesn't mean I don't want to be in there to gloat every time I get the answer right and they get it wrong." Roxas stated proudly.

"Dear sweet god, it's Leon and his Advanced Trig class all over again." Axel threw up his arms in an overdramatic gesture of surrender. "Not only is your family going to have to worry about Professor Merlin blowing them up in a spectacular display of revenge, but now we're going to have Professor Vexen out for blood as well? I quit this. I like living."

"We've already _had_ this conversation. You can't quit. I'm not done with you yet." Axel sighed but nodded anyways. He knew better than to think Roxas really meant it in the literal sense, but it was nice to know his boyfriend still cared enough to want to keep him around. "But anyways, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about? I may not be going to class for now, but I do have a regularly scheduled life I would like to get back to as soon as I possibly can."

"You really don't care about me, do you?" Axel asked with a rather convincing pout on his face. When his boyfriend did nothing but shrug in acknowledgement, he inhaled sharply and gave up on dragging the conversation on any longer. "I think there's something weird going on with your brothers, and I don't mean something of the romantic variety this time. Like something of the 'I think they are planning on killing us slowly but surely' variety."

"And what makes that different from any other Wednesday?" Roxas asked blandly as he finally chose to sink down into one of the nearby chairs, having finally given up completely on being able to leave. "I hate to point this out to you, but my brothers are constantly plotting pain and humiliation for the human race in general on most days, and the rest of the time they are focused on making Sora and my lives a living hell. This is not a big deal."

"I think it is a very big deal." Axel protested. "In fact, I'm one hundred percent certain that this is a big deal. Besides, haven't you noticed something about them over the past few months?"

"Uh… Apparently not whatever it is that you are thinking about." Roxas answered cautiously. "Here, answer me this one question: Do I _want_ to know what you are referring to this time around?"

"I think you do. It might be the difference in living and dying." Axel responded gravely.

"Fine, fine, go on. Against my better judgment I'm listening." Roxas crossed his arms and settled in for the long haul, knowing that he wasn't about to get out of this until he had heard what Axel wanted to say and had quite the long conversation about it afterwards.

"Well, to put it quite bluntly: I think they know."

"And what exactly is it that you think they know?" Roxas asked curiously. There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that said he knew exactly what it was Axel thought his brothers knew, but there was the little glimmer of hope deep within him that said maybe it was something different. That maybe there really wasn't reason for him to suddenly want to move very, very far away, preferably somewhere cold so that Cloud would never want to hunt him down.

Axel shot a quick glance around the partially empty Quad before leaning in closer to his boyfriend and lowering his voice. "You know very well what it is they know, and I think that if you took a second to really look back over their behavior for the past few months then you would see that I am very much correct in the way I'm thinking."

Roxas tried to swallow around the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat and leant in closer, realizing that this was not a conversation that could be allowed to be heard by the wrong set of ears. "And what instances are you talking about?"

"Well, let's think about this for a second." Axel scooted his chair closer and his boyfriend did the same. As much as both would have liked to move to somewhere more private like their dorm, it really wasn't a place to be trusted as it used to be. The whole bet fiasco had set most of the campus to paranoia and bugging anyone who may or may not have a vested interest in the way things eventually shook down was not entirely out of the question.

To put it quite simply: Everyone had gone insane.

"First of all, every single camera or bugging device that Selphie or anyone else has managed to sneak into their room stopped working back in December, and try as they might, they can't seem to get them back online. Now, camera inference would generally be something expected from their room every once and awhile because I'm pretty sure Cloud builds things he really shouldn't be building…"

"Yeah, there was more than one time when he interrupted TV signal back at home and then there is always that memorable time when he shut down our high school's entire computer network when he was a junior because he wanted to build a nuclear combustion chamber for purposes yet to be determined." Roxas offered up. "But I see what you're saying. Generally Cloud's stupid projects are nipped in the bud before they can do too much harm… I don't think Leon likes living in fear of exploding every day, so there really isn't a reason for this to have gone on for months."

Axel nodded in assent. "But, for the sake of argument, let's say there's something in there that Cloud has managed to hide from Leon, a not completely unheard of occurrence."

"Wait, so now you're trying to disprove your own evidence?" Roxas could tell that his boyfriend was up to something and he took a second to wonder at why the red-head had never wanted to be a lawyer. He liked arguing enough for it.

"Patience, Roxas, patience. I'm going to get to the point soon enough." Axel rolled his shoulders back and cracked his neck before leaning back in and catching Roxas' full attention once more. "Okay, so like I said, the camera interference in and of itself could be easily explainable and not a cause for much concern."

"You did say that."

"Yes, I did, so the next point is that there have been quite a few convenient instances in which Cloud and Leon stood to have a lot to lose, but that miraculously resolved themselves." Axel crossed his arms over his chest and waited for his boyfriend to do some thinking over that point.

"Once again I have to ask how your instances are any different than the other fifty million times my brothers have managed to worm their way out of trouble." As much as Roxas hated to admit it, Cloud and Leon had an uncanny streak of luck when it came to making sure they came out of anything and everything they could think to stick their noses into smelling like roses.

"Don't you think it's a little convenient that Demyx comes forward and offers to find out what happened to Cloud back when he and Sephiroth had their falling out and then, not even a _day_ later Sephiroth pulled his little stunt and Cloud was forced to tell us what happened. Now, I know that it turned out what Demyx had been talking about was something completely different, but even if it hadn't been, us knowing in advance about it would have made it so that we could have reacted better and steered the student body away from doing something that would have ended up in Cloud getting his feelings messed with." Axel paused for a second while Roxas thought this over. "But, once more for the sake of argument, let's say that was a lucky coincidence and that Sephiroth was bound to do something stupid like that sooner rather than later because he's an insane mother fucker."

"He is insane…"

"Yes, he is. Now, the next incident is Leon's whole father fiasco deal that just happened. How in the _hell_ did that resolve itself without something blowing up in our faces?" Axel asked seriously and Roxas found himself floundering about for an answer and coming up with nothing.

"I don't know. Quite frankly, I don't think I _want_ to know."

"Too bad. I'm going to tell you what I think anyways."

"I was afraid of that."

"Contrary to popular belief, your brothers are not idiots, nor are they completely blind and deaf to the things that go on around them." Axel pointed out. "If people are talking about them, and passing around their secrets, they are bound to hear about it, or, at the very least, notice that everyone they know is acting strangely when it comes to them."

"So you think they heard someone talking about this and for some reason decided to… What? Trick us into thinking they didn't know anything was wrong?" Roxas snorted in disbelief. "That isn't like them at all. If they had heard something about either Demyx poking his nose where it didn't belong or about the whole Leon's dad situation then the whole school would have known about it then and there, possibly due to some kind of nuclear explosion. They aren't the type to sit back and let things play out when they could be getting their vengeance in blood right then and there."

"This is true…" Axel seemed put out by the fact that he had apparently looked over that little detail. "But, Roxas, they can't _really_ be that lucky, can they?"

Roxas sighed and nodded his head. "Where Cloud and Leon are concerned, the laws of time, space, logic, and even physics for the most part don't seem to work correctly. There is absolutely nothing that makes sense, or will make sense in our lifetimes where they are concerned so we're just best off pulling ourselves out of this as much as humanly possible and hope that when the time comes that they really _do_ find out, we can escape most of the blast zone."

"You and Sora keep saying that, but I don't think you really understand that there is no possible way for any of us to do that." Axel pointed out and Roxas looked at him curiously. As far as the blonde was concerned, it was never too late to lock themselves in their dorms for the rest of the school year. "And I know you're going to suggest either running or hiding in the dorm for as long as it takes for this shit to blow over, but you and I both know that isn't going to work. Not only is every student on campus going to continue to hunt us down in the hopes of wringing intimate knowledge of your brothers out of us, Cloud and Leon are never going to believe we sat back and let this happen without getting involve, or that we just didn't know about it."

"Damn, since when do you know my secret plans?" Roxas muttered unhappily, knowing that his boyfriend was right but still trying to cling to the last bit of hope that there was _some_ way of not dying. "I've become predictable. This must change."

"You're not predictable… Okay, so when it comes to your brothers you are, but since you're still alive I guess that means whatever you're doing is working." Roxas started looking a bit smug at that so Axel quickly jumped to add on to his thought. "But this isn't exactly the normal type of trouble where your brothers are concerned, now is it? I don't think running and hiding is going to work and since you might as well just go all in, you'd both be better off working with Riku and I. At least that way you'll know what's going on and you can help us make sure that your brothers come out of this still friends, mmkay?"

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd think that _you_ set all this up just so that Sora and I would give you all that juicy insider information you both seem to think we have." Roxas smirked as Axel rolled his eyes. "I hate to point this out to you, but you and Riku know pretty much everything about Cloud and Leon that we do. Hazard of practically living with us for the past five or so years."

"Roxas, we could take a lifetime of intent study and I don't think we'd ever understand them. Humor us please?"

Roxas sighed but nodded anyways. There really wasn't anything else to be done and at least this way he and his twin would be able to step in if things got even further out of hand. As much as they claimed to be indifferent to their brothers' concerns and worries, they really did love the pair (albeit grudgingly) and helping the people you love was unfortunately something that their mother had pounded into their heads ever since they were old enough to understand human speech.

"Oh goody." Axel clapped his hands enthusiastically. "I finally got to win one!"

Now it was Roxas' turn to roll his eyes, but whatever undoubtedly witty and sarcastic remark he was about to say was lost when both boys caught sight of the strangest thing they had ever seen walk across the now slightly more crowded Quad

In actuality, it really wouldn't have been considered strange for the most part. After all, Leon and Cloud frequently walked through the various quads either on their way to class or looking for friends or just wanting to walk for the sheer joy of not being cooped up in either dorm or classroom. And, almost as frequently, they could be seen not only together, but walking nearly shoulder to shoulder deep in conversation. It was expected considering they were not only brothers, but friends and business partners. In fact, it was so rare to see one without the other that it probably would have been more strange had it just been Cloud or Leon on their own.

However, in the way of all things that should have been normal but really weren't, there was something different about this particular occasion… A little fact that had both Roxas and Axel open-mouthed and wondering if they had woken up at all this morning or if they were still stuck in some kind of fucked up dream.

"Are they…"

"I think they are, Roxas, I think they are."

"They can't be…"

"They are, though."

"But Axel, they're _holding hands_!"

"I know…. Be a dear and call me an ambulance… I think I might be having a heart attack."

* * *

"Please tell me that I am not the only one who saw that!" Sora was beside himself, a fact that did not go over Riku's head seeing as the little brunette was now pacing back and forth hyperventilating. Too bad the silver-haired boy wasn't in a good position himself to really appreciate the situation what with his own pending anxiety attack and all.

"Sora!" Both boys jumped at the sound of Roxas frantically calling for his twin, the blonde sprinting across the Rec Center to skid to a stop at Sora and Riku's table with Axel doing the same mere seconds later, both of them paler than usual and panting as though they had just run a marathon. "Sora you won't believe what we just saw!"

"If it has something to do with Leon, Cloud, and hand holding, then we just saw it, too." Riku mumbled tiredly, blatant shock still working its way through his system. "Roxas, are we dreaming? Please tell me we're dreaming…"

"I wish we were dreaming." Roxas murmured and sunk down into an empty chair as though standing took far more effort than he had at the moment. "I… I don't know what's going on here, but something tells me that we are not going to like the way it ends."

"And why not?" Riku asked as Sora managed to get his breathing under control and Axel took up a seat next to his exhausted boyfriend. "This is just what we've been waiting for. A way out of this stupid bet without either Cloud or Leon being the wiser. If we can prove that they're holding hands because they've decided to start dating, then we can put an end to this and the whole school will stop poking around in their private lives and everything will go back to normal… Well, as normal as things can be around here."

"Considering they happen to be wandering around in public holding hands and whispering into each other's ears, I don't think that proving anything is going to be the problem at this point." Sora grumbled. "Oh my god. What is _Mom_ going to say?"

Roxas grew even paler (if that were at all possible) at that thought. "Mom's going to kill us. She's just going to kill us. Or turn us into women, whichever seems more appropriate at the time."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Axel cut in, now thoroughly confused as to what had the twins freaking out this time. "Why would your mother want to kill you or turn you into girls because Cloud and Leon made an adult decision, on their own I might add, to go on dates or hold hands or have wild man-sex in their dorm room or whatever the hell it is that they're doing?"

Ignoring Roxas and Sora's sudden facial contortion and gags over the thought of their brothers having sex in their dorm, Riku continued on the conversation with his best friend, knowing that the twins were more than occupied with chasing away bad mental images.

"Dude, Mrs. Strife wants nothing more than to have grandkids sometime before she hits fifty and with Roxas and Sora definitely not in a position to be having them any time soon… Unless there's something you're not telling me…" At Axel's glare he hurried on. "Cloud and Leon being gay causes her to lose her last opportunity to see her children procreate. Something tells me she's not going to be happy with that."

"Oh… Right." Axel seemed the think this over for a second. "Well, I guess now isn't the time to worry about that since we really _don't_ know what's going on with Leon and Cloud. I know that explaining away hand holding is kind of hard, but what if there was a reasonable explanation for it? Or what if they are trying to date but it doesn't work out?"

"This is true…" Riku agreed. "Hell, back when Leon was dating Rinoa they would have days where they got together and then broke up again within hours… Granted, most of the time it was Rinoa breaking up with Leon because he wasn't good at showing his emotions, but still… For all we know, this is something that will be over and done with by the end of the day."

"Wait, so now you're saying that my brothers are fickle and can't hold on to a relationship that could make them happy even for a day?" Apparently Sora had recovered and had leapt in to defend his missing brothers. "So what if Mom's going to kill us? Cloud and Leon deserve to be just as happy as Roxas and I are, so who cares if they get that happiness through shagging each other?"

Roxas swallowed another gag at the 'shagging' reference but offered up his opinion as well. "Yeah, and at least this way we know they're both going to be taken care of. In fact, I think they deserve each other."

"That's not what you said back in August when you placed twenty munny on there being nothing between them to spark a romance." Axel offered up sarcastically, taking both of his glares like a man and going on with the conversation. "Besides, we were just throwing the _possibility_ out there. Like I've said fifty times in the last half hour, we don't _know_ what's going on with Leon and Cloud and I highly doubt they are going to be very forthcoming with the info we want to know."

"So we've got to find out for ourselves, preferably before the whole school sees them wandering around leaning all over each other." Sora jumped up to his feet and his twin followed suit.

"Hold on a second!" Riku and Axel quickly got to their feet as well, the silver-haired boy placing a gently restraining hand on his boyfriend's shoulder. "Why does it matter if the whole school sees them or not? With all the gossip surrounding them already finding out what's happening through our friends would be five hundred times faster than stalking them and possibly risking their wrath for spying."

"Because, genius, what if it is something that isn't going to last?" Roxas pointed out haughtily, then the whole school will know about it if they break up and Cloud and Leon have never been the most emotionally mature people in the world. It would do more than just piss them off to have every following their personal lives. It would hurt their feelings, and it would hurt them hardcore. Just because they would never say anything about it doesn't mean that they wouldn't feel betrayed."

"We've got to make damned sure that this is something that they really do want and not something that they've been subconsciously pushed into by some group of desperate students or something before news gets out of them possibly dating." Sora finished as he shrugged out of his boyfriend's now lax grip. "There is nothing worse than questioning whether you got together with someone because you wanted to or because people were pushing you to. And I would know. I almost ruined Kairi's life because I let the views of what everyone else thought to get to me, and I'm _not_ going to let that happen to my brothers."

"Well put, Sora." Roxas quickly grabbed his twin by the forearm and they took off at a sprint, too intent on getting to the bottom of what was going on with their brothers to pay attention to the boyfriends they left behind, which was a good thing because Riku and Axel were too busy trying to beat down their own emotions to be able to run correctly at that moment.

"Sora's still not over that whole 'normal' phase yet, is he?" Axel asked quietly once he'd managed to gain some form of control over his emotions.

"Nope." Riku sighed and stretched. "Alrighty then, I guess we're going to have to go help them sooner or later."

"Aw, come on!" Axel pouted but followed his friend as they began to make their way through the Rec Center in the general direction their boyfriends had taken off in. "I'm your best friend! I deserve to know about this! You used to confide in me, man. What happened?"

"Dude, you're acting like a girl." Riku crossed his arms over his chest and sent a flat look in Axel's direction. "And since when have I ever _confided_ in you? Told you things you probably shouldn't have known while I was drunk or called you at two in the morning when I was stuck in the middle of nowhere, yes, but I don't think that counts as a confidence."

Axel seemed to think this over for a second before pouting. "Number one: I don't think you used that word right. Number two: Okay, you got me. But I would like you to know that I would tell you anything you wanted to know whenever you wanted to know it because I'm a _good_ friend."

"Yeah, okay, I might hold you to that one then." Riku answered with a smirk.

"Damn it, you knew I was bluffing!"

"Axel…. Just shut up and let's go help the twins."

A heavy sigh. "Fine…."

* * *

"And then I was running like hell to make my connection and some fat assed security guard tackled me for no good reason!" Yuffie's squeaking tones were luckily slightly soften by the static of the phone's connection and the distortion of the speaker phone. "I swear, people these days are just so _rude_!"

"Are you sure you didn't do something to deserve being tackled?" Leon asked absentmindedly as Cloud rolled his eyes and leant back in his chair. "I hate to point this out to you but you tend to have an uncanny knack for getting people to wish you harm. Though I do have to say that most of the time they attempt to strangle you instead of just tackling you."

"Hey!" Yuffie's squawk carried out through the phone's tiny speakers with half its usual intensity, but Cloud and Leon were sure that she was now getting more strange looks wherever she was. "Okay, so I may have been screaming something along the lines of if anyone got in my way I'd punch the shit out of them, but I don't see what was so bad about that."

"Did you get it on camera?" Cloud asked, clearly more interested in getting to witness his friend's embarrassment than any concern for her well-being.

"Of course not!" Yuffie huffed and both boys could practically see her crossing her arms over her chest and stomping her foot. "I got that taken away from me in the first airport because I was pretending it was a radar gun and tried to clock the progress of everyone in the terminal. Apparently even _pretending _something is any type of gun is grounds to get your stuff taken away from you."

"_I_ could have told you that." Leon grumbled. "So where are you now?"

"About halfway home by my calculations. I've got about another hour before my next flight, but because of being held against by will and missing my second one I got upgraded from Economy to Economy _Plus_ for the last one. I hope I get it this flight, too."

"What the hell is Economy _Plus_?" Cloud inquired sarcastically.

"I dunno." Yuffie sighed and most likely shrugged. "It's somewhere between Economy class and Business class. I think the only thing I got was more leg room to be honest. Still had to pay six bucks for the crappy food."

"Well, that's exciting." Cloud mumbled. "When are you coming back to school? Creative Writing is gonna be so _boring_ without you."

"I'll be back next week." Yuffie answered crisply. "Hey, it's not _my_ fault my great aunt decided to die a few days ago or that my parents figured it would be the _perfect _time to come back and visit with family. If it makes you feel any better, I wish I was back at school. It more interesting than being here."

"Yeah, yeah. Well, I would just like for you to know that you're missing out on the best April Fool's prank ever and you're going to regret it…" Cloud teased and Yuffie let out another indignant squawk. "Maybe if you're nice I'll tell you all about it when you get back."

"Cloud…."

"Oh, look, our brothers are here. Gotta go!"

"Cloud! Don't you dare hang up on me! I'm gonna…."

There was a rather satisfying click that heralded the end of Yuffie's threats and Cloud snapped up his cell phone and turned his full attention on where Leon was shaking his head slowly.

"What? They are here, they're just hiding behind the potted plant pretending to be sneaky." Cloud pointed out as he began entertaining himself by flipping his phone open and closed. "Besides, she wasn't going to shut up until she wrung every last bit of information out of us."

"You started it." Leon resisted the urge to sigh heavily and just get up and go back to the dorm. "Whatever… Sora, Roxas, we see you behind the plant. What do you want?"

There was an angry groan and some mild profanity before Roxas and Sora tumbled out from behind the plant, giving each other rather dirty looks as they telepathically blamed each other for being caught. Cloud and Leon watched on in amusement as the twins pushed and shoved their way to their feet and finally turned to look at their older brothers, with Sora being the one to answer Leon's question.

"Why can't we want nothing more than to spend some time with our older brothers?" The brunette asked innocently while Roxas attempted to put on the most innocent face he could muster. It came out looking more pained than happy, though.

"Because you were hiding behind a plant trying to hear our conversation." Leon rested his chin gently on his hand and watched as his brothers turned three different shades of red before finally settling on a shade just below neon. "Did you hear what you wanted?"

"No." Sora pouted and scuffed his shoe along the ground guiltily. "We couldn't hear anything because Roxas was complaining."

"I was not complaining." Roxas protested. "I was merely suggesting that you get your fat head out of my way so that I could see better."

"Sounded like complaining to me." Cloud interjected. "But that still doesn't answer the question of why you were spying on us."

"We weren't spying on you!" Roxas quickly jumped onto the defensive. "We were merely hanging out behind a plant that just so happened to be near where you were having a private discussion. There was no active listening involved on our parts."

"Too bad we weren't having a private discussion or we might be really mad right about now." Cloud flipped open and closed his phone one more time before stowing it in his pocket. "Okay, you've got our attentions. What did you think we would be talking about outside in front of the Rec Center with the entirety of the student population wandering by close enough to hear us?"

"Uh…" Sora and Roxas had lost quite a bit of their previous bluster at this point. Enough so that Axel's theory that there really might not be anything going on at all suddenly seemed to be gaining some credibility. "I dunno. You just looked like you might be talking about something private… What with the way you two were leaning in to each other and all…"

"You mean the way we were huddled over a cell phone trying to hear Yuffie?" Cloud answered. "Yeah, that was really a huge secret. Let me tell you about it. I don't know what we were thinking asking her whether her flights had gone well out here in public. It was a conversation much better suited to our dorm room. In fact, I think we should head back there now so that I can call her back. We did get disconnected after all."

"You mean you hung up on her." Leon added in.

Cloud waved away Leon's comment with one hand. "Details, details. The fact of the matter is that apparently we were having a conversation in which we didn't want our brothers to hear. Regardless of whether or not this was the case, I now feel the urge to vindicate their need to follow us while at the same times thwarting their plans for doing so."

"Have you been attempting to blackmail Zexion into helping you with your English thesis?" Leon asked curiously. "I only ask because you used words that were three syllables in that last statement and I wasn't aware you knew anything over two."

"Wrong, I stole Yuffie's SAT book before she left." Cloud confessed happily. "I did it more to make her mad since she wouldn't let me borrow it a month ago, but I found that Professor Valentine gave me a better grade when I put nonsensical words into anything I write for him. I think it's because I used them wrong and it amuses him."

"I _know_ it's because you use them wrong and it amuses him." Leon cut in. "Now that you've reminded me about our Creative Writing assignment that is due tomorrow morning, by the way, I feel the sudden urge to go to the dorm and work on it."

"That's boring. I liked it better when we were going back to have a secret conversation." Cloud grumbled to himself but he followed his roommate's lead and got to his feet anyways. "If we finish our homework quickly can we have a secret conversation then?"

Leon just shrugged and the two walked away without even a second look at where their younger brothers were staring at them in confusion, wondering exactly why they had been so sure that their brothers were up to something secretive. They also couldn't seem to remember why they had been following the older two in the first place. In fact, it wasn't until Axel and Riku came ambling up that they were able to think anything beyond, 'Damn our brothers are weird.'

But that was normal.

"Hey, so where's Cloud and Leon? Did they say something about holding hands or what?" Riku asked as Roxas and Sora finally managed to push themselves out of the confusion their older brothers had left behind.

"Damn it!" Roxas kicked a leg of the table angrily. "How the hell do they _do_ that?"

"You mean how they seem to know exactly what it is that you wanted and easily direct you away from getting it before either changing the subject or cutting you out of the conversation completely, effectively making you wonder what it was that you thought to gain out of following them?" Axel asked as the twins looked at him with looks of mild awe on their faces. The red-head shrugged. "Probably through the same intense streak of luck that allows everything and anything they attempt to work out for the better."

"Besides, you two should be used to it. They do it all the time." Riku pointed out. "Now are you going to follow them or not? I thought we wanted to know something."

"Yeah but… They're going back to their room. Who knows when they're going to come back out again and the cameras still aren't working…. Er, not that I would know anything about that…" Roxas sighed heavily and slumped against the table. "But something _is_ going on. As much as Cloud and Leon enjoy fucking with our minds on a daily basis, they don't generally do it unless there is something to mess with us about."

"So let's go find out what it is that they are hiding once and for all!" Axel announce cheerfully.

Sora laughed. "I'd _love_ to see you try and follow our brothers around in an attempt to find out what's going on. In case you haven't noticed from my and Roxas' spectacular failure, they have like a sixth sense or something. They're going to _know_ you're following them."

"If I know you two, I would have to say that you tried to hide behind this plant about ten feet away from your targets." Riku smirked smugly as the twins shrugged and nodded. "As ninja-worthy as you seem to think this is, it's really not. Hiding isn't really your forte, Sora. It just… isn't."

"Fine then, 'Mr. I Obviously Never Want to Have Sex With My Boyfriend Again'. You do it if you're so smart." Sora pouted and Riku felt slightly guilty. But only slightly. Sora really was a bad hider. Not that he was going to admit _that_ out loud again. He liked having sex now that he actually got to do it on a regular basis. He wasn't going to give up on that just because he was right.

Axel shrugged. "He never said _we_ were good at it either."

"Yeah." Riku pulled lightly on a wayward strand of his friend's shockingly red hair. "We don't exactly tend to blend in with bushy head over here."

"Says the guy who wore a fucking _blindfold _into the library that one time because he figured it would boost his hearing enough that he wouldn't have to get too close to the people he was supposed to be spying on." Axel groused. "Tell me. How did knocking down an entire row of shelves and getting banned from the place for the rest of your life feel?"

"Fuck you, Axel. You promised never to speak of that incident again."

"I lied. Get over it."

"Hey!" Roxas was the one to bring everyone's attentions back to the matter at hand. "Alright, so none of us are good at sneaking. Big deal. All we really have to do is split up and hang out at one of the places Cloud and Leon frequent. They'll show up sooner or later and then one of us can simply _ask_ them what's going on. If they really are considering going out then they'll tell us. They know better than to try and hide it for fear that we'll go to mom and then they really won't have any privacy."

"I like living a little bit too much for that." Axel crossed his arms over his chest and sent a disappointed look in his boyfriend's direction. "As semi-civil as Leon has been to me ever since the accident, I'm not willing to risk losing that because I asked him an embarrassing question and threatened to bring his mom into his private life. I still remember being chased up a tree far too much for my liking, thank you very much."

"Fine!" Roxas rolled his eyes as Riku nodded his support vigorously in the background. "Split up, go somewhere that our brothers are likely to show up sooner or later and when they do, call us and _we'll_ come do all the dirty work. They can't kill us after all. Mom would have their lungs for it."

"Why _does_ your mother take pleasure in threatening the safety of your internal organs?" Riku asked absentmindedly. "It doesn't seem healthy."

"Why does your father kidnap hobos to lock in his basement for a few weeks at a time before releasing them back into the world after claiming he has 'shown them the cure for humanity'?" Sora shot back. "Don't question my family's lunacy and I won't question yours."

"Dad's psycho. Runs in the family." Riku admitted easily. "Luckily I skipped out on that gene. Besides, the cops said it was perfectly legal so long as the hobos weren't harmed and no one pressed charges. At least he feeds them."

"Whatever!" Roxas interrupted before another argument could break out and they got delayed for any longer. Cloud and Leon weren't going to take _that_ long to do their Creative Writing assignment. They were only going to half-ass it and play on Professor Valentine's laziness as always. "Look, Riku just go to the North Quad and read a book or something. Axel, you can go stay in the Rec Center and wait there. Sora and I will take the parking lot where Leon's car is. They're bound to show up in one of those places before the day is out."

Riku and Axel sighed but turned to go none the less, both knowing that it was futile to argue with Roxas once he got an idea in his head and Sora and Roxas exchanged weary looks before trudging in the general direction of the parking lot in question.

"You don't _really_ think Leon and Cloud are dating, do you?" Sora asked and his twin pinched the bridge of his nose in a very Leon-like way.

"I don't know _what_ to think anymore." Roxas admitted tiredly. "All I care about is ending this thing one way or another. It has gotten so god damned far out of hand that I don't think anyone even knows what they're fighting about anymore. If getting this over and done with means having to see our brothers in a serious relationship, then I think that's a conclusion I can live with."

"But, Roxas, they'll kill each other before the year is out and you know it." Sora protested. "Hell, they've come close to killing each other as it is and that's _without_ throwing hormones into the mix. And what happens when they break up? It's not like they'd be able to get away from each other unless one or the other breaks away from our family all together. I don't want that to happen just as much as I don't want this bet to continue."

"Why do you say 'when' they break up? Why can't they have a happy life together forever?" Roxas asked curiously.

Sora visibly recoiled at that. "I… I don't know. I mean, people have broken up for more serious offenses than some of the things they fight about. Cloud didn't talk to Leon for a whole week once just because Leon beat him at a video game. You're seriously telling me that they have a chance to make it to forever when most of the world is cycling through husbands and wives as though they were nothing more than things to keep them amused for a year or so."

"So are you trying to say that you and Riku aren't going to last, or me and Axel?" Roxas inquired, now very interested in what his twin was trying to say. "Are Zack and Aerith going to get divorced, too? And what about our Uncle Genesis and Angeal? Are they just some kind of twenty year fluke? Are we all doomed to not make it because a set of statistics said so?"

"No, but…." Sora bit his lip in thought. "I just think that there's too much at stake for them to have any lasting thing between them. They aren't just friends or acquaintances. They're _brothers. _They know everything about each other. They're closer to each other than anyone else. Dude, they even watch _porn_ together, and I wish I was shitting you about that."

"How the hell do you know that!?" Roxas shrieked, wishing there was a way he could rewind time and make sure his twin never said that. "That's disgusting!"

"I didn't _want_ to know!" Sora yelled back. "I just… Let's just say that I chose a bad time to bring their laundry to their room one day, okay."

"Ew. More than enough details." Roxas held up a hand in hopes that his twin would stop there and not mentally scar him any further for one day. Too bad he was about to get one of the worst surprises where mental scarring was concerned not even a minute away around a very innocent looking corner. "Maybe they really would make a good couple after all, and because of all that shit, not in spite of it. It takes a hell of a lot of trust to share the things they share with each other, and let's face it. What are the chances of either Leon or Cloud trusting anyone else that much?"

"Slim to none." Sora agreed. "Maybe I'm just being a stupid worry-wart, but haven't we had enough shit going down in our family this year concerning them without a relationship that may or may not explode thrown into the mix?"

Roxas agreed with his twin's statement, he really did, but he was unable to affirm his position aloud because whatever he had been about to say flew from his mind the second he and Sora cleared the corner they had been walking toward and they managed to get a good glimpse into the alleyway that faced them.

It was a normal alleyway. It had all the normal alley things such as trashcans, a dumpster, and various empty boxes but, once again, in the way of normal things that weren't really all that normal, there was something different about this alleyway today. Something that made both Sora and Roxas suddenly feel the need to scream, faint, and vomit all at the same time.

Instead they just ran, brains giving into their bodies instincts for getting their hosts far enough away from the traumatizing scene so that they would be able to snap out of their intense shock before it damaged their systems for good.

It wasn't just anything that was in that alleyway after all. Of course it wasn't. An empty alleyway never was a good cause of shock. It was an occupied alleyway.

In it was Cloud.

And Leon.

And they were most definitely, without a doubt kissing. Intently. In public. With tongues.

And all Sora and Roxas could do was run… And cry…

* * *

"He's scaring me. Make him stop!" Riku was paler than usual as he held onto his babbling, tear-streaked boyfriend firmly by the shoulders, trying to make sense out of what the brunette was attempting to say through the hyperventilation, the dry heaves, and the tears. Axel shot his friend a dirty look as he cradle his own boyfriend, the blonde being in the very same condition as Riku's boyfriend.

"Don't you think I would if I could?!" The red-head shot back as he turned his worried gaze back at where Roxas had now taken to attempting to curl up in a ball on the ground in the fetal position. "What the hell is wrong with them?"

"I don't think I want to know at this point. All I want is for them to _breathe_ again!" Riku yelled back, clearly concerned almost to the point of hyperventilation himself. "Sora! Pull it together, man! Tell me what's wrong."

"L-Leon…" Sora finally managed to get out around a rather large inhalation of air before falling into another fit of dry heaves.

"C-Cloud…" Roxas gasped out as he managed to wiggle away from his boyfriend's concerned hands to curl up on the ground next to Riku and his twin, both distressed boys curling around each other as though to protect themselves from whatever it was that had them so worked up.

"What about them?" Axel asked sternly, a sinking feeling in the back of his mind. If Leon and Cloud were involved there was no telling what had happened to the twins. "Roxas, what happened? I can't help you if I don't know why you're freaking out so bad."

"Oh my god! Mom's going to freak out!" Sora screeched and Roxas whimpered into his twin's shoulder. "Mom's going to freak out and we're going to get it because we were there and we didn't do anything and we saw it and told her and…. I think I need to lay down for a minute…"

Sora slumped bonelessly against Roxas as Riku and Axel exchanged confused looks. Reaching out to place a gentle hand against his boyfriend's cheek, Riku made Sora look up at him before speaking again. "Sora… Exactly what is it that Cloud and Leon were doing that is going to cause your mother to be upset?"

"Making out!" Roxas was the one to supply this answer in a high-pitched sort of squeak before collapsing completely against Sora, both boys now more concerned with going to sleep and forgetting everything they had ever seen. "In the alleyway. They were making out in the alleyway! With tongues! I saw a tongue! Axel, please kill me. I'm begging you. Put me out of my misery now."

"Well, I would have to say that you're going to have to get used to your brothers making out if what you're saying is true." Axel pointed out calmly, easily believing the twins in their claim because faking a mental breakdown wasn't something Roxas was prone to doing. Whatever they had seen in that alleyway had been mentally scarring enough to send them into hysterics, and Leon and Cloud going at it was probably the only thing that would have qualified as the mentally scarring activity that they could feasibly have seen at that point. "Something tells me those two don't go around kissing people they don't have some kind of emotional attachment to."

"Something tells me that they don't go kissing people _in public_ without something going on." Riku rocked back onto his heels and assumed an almost thoughtful position. "Axel, what day is it?"

"April first." Axel answered automatically. "Honestly, what is it with everyone and wanting to know what day it… Oh…. That's why."

"What!?" Sora and Roxas really needed to learn how not to shriek in quite such an ear shattering frequency in Riku and Axel's opinion but both boys waited patiently for the ringing in their ears to die down before Axel finished up the thought that Riku'd had.

"Well, think about it for a second." Axel went on calmly as though he weren't in dire need of eardrum repair surgery. "Apparently Cloud has had some form of significant other before, Sephiroth included as much as it pains me to say, and yet we have never known about any of them. Now this could entirely be because he doesn't tell anyone anything about himself, relying more on sarcastic comments to deflect attention from his personal life, but it also might have something to do with the fact that he has never been seen in a compromising position with anyone by anyone. And yet we know because of the wonderful Mrs. Strife spilling the beans that he has had sex with at least someone else who wasn't Riku's asshole of a brother."

"Also." Riku cut in. "We know that Leon dated Rinoa. Everyone knows Leon dated Rinoa. She wasn't exactly subtle in her attachment. However, in all of the time he spent in the 'on' phase with her, he was only once spotted doing what could have been in any way described as 'making out' with her. His own girlfriend who he claimed to like and who he apparently had sexual feelings for, and he was only seen _once_ going at it with her in public, and the witnesses to this event: myself, Cloud, and both you and Roxas, Sora, all agreed after the fact that it looked as though Leon were locked in what could only have been described as an embarrassment coma and that Rinoa was the one doing all the work."

"I do remember the embarrassment coma…" Sora muttered. "But still, as much as I am seriously trying to block out the event we just witnessed, I do have to say that Leon looked like he was enjoying himself quite a bit, or he was at least actively taking part in what was going on."

"As he would if he were trying to convince someone that he was making out with your brother for any reason." Riku agreed. "Really, what are the odds that they would get together for real without at least fifty people knowing about it already? They've got people watching their every move night and day unless they are locked in their rooms, and even then I'm pretty sure more than a few people have taken to breaking in and hiding there in the hopes of seeing something to let them know either way if your brothers got together. Don't you find it a little odd that no one has run to us for confirmation of seeing Leon and Cloud holding hands or sucking face in alleyways?"

"A little…" Roxas sat up and scratched his head. "So you're trying to say that they knew we would see them walking through very public spaces holding hands and making out also in public and _no one else_ saw them at all?"

"Why do you always poke holes into our theories?" Axel whined as all four boys finally started to make their way to their feet (Sora and Roxas were understandably still a bit shaky).

"Well, _someone_ has to." Roxas answered snippily. "Ninety percent of your ideas are bad ones or just plain wrong. If I didn't sit around pointing out the holes in all your plots and theories you might have been throw in jail for real and not just as an overnight warning."

"True…. But this time I'm right." Axel responded smugly. "This is too big a deal for it not to have gotten out by now, which means that we are the only ones privileged enough to have seen them. Considering the fact that it is highly improbable they traveled all the way from their dorm to the North Quad and then from the North Quad to the Rec Center to the alleyway leading to the parking lot hold hands without someone noticing and sending out the red alert, there only is one other explanation. They _wanted_ us to see them for the mere joy of fucking with our heads. They do that a lot you know."

"We know." Sora offered up blandly before sighing heavily and shaking his head. "But I see your point for once. It doesn't make sense that no one has come to us foaming at the mouth about being right or praying that they were wrong. Why, though? Why would they want us to think they were dating even if it was just a prank?"

"Because they're assholes." Riku and Axel answered simultaneously.

"Even assholes have motives, dickface." Roxas quickly jumped to his twin's defense. "Not saying our brothers aren't asshole, 'cause they are, but I'm with Sora. Why the hell would they think to do this? Especially at this time?"

"Because they've always had a very odd sense of comedic timing?" Riku offered up. "Hell, you of all people should know that they never make sense, but this is too much of a coincidence to be any other way. There would be nothing that would please your brothers more than to inflict mental strife upon the both of you. And if they can get me and Axel involved as well, then that's just gravy."

"Besides, they only other way they would have decided to do this was if they knew about the bet, but they can't." Axel added in. "They really just can't. Roxas, you should know that. You were very keen on telling me all the reasons I was wrong not even a few hours ago, but I don't think this is a situation when I'm bound to be wrong about _both_ things. Not when they're complete opposites of the same situation."

"This is true…" Roxas took a second to think about this. "And I guess I see your point. But still… Ew… They could have found a better way to prank us than give us nightmares for the rest of our natural lives. But I can't fault them for dedication. There was an amazing lack of embarrassment coma on Leon's part after all."

"Well, of course there was. Need I remind you of the wonderful close-up of Leon burning a hole through Cloud's ass that is still flitting around campus?" Axel gloated while Roxas merely rolled his eyes, having heard just about everything Axel was about to say in fifty different ways already. "Maybe he was living out some kind of fantasy. Obviously Cloud didn't mind either considering that by your account he didn't seem to be too put out by the fact that his supposedly straight roommate was happily engaged in attempting to reach his tonsils with his tongue. I think that would be something that would concern me if someone I had no romantic feelings for attempted to do the same to me."

"For your health you'd better hope your first reaction to any who is not me attempting to kiss you is to physically throw them through a wall if necessary." Was Roxas' only response to this newest form of idiotry from his boyfriend.

Waving off Roxas' possessiveness with one hand Axel turned to face the rest of the group. "Nothing is going to come of us standing here picking apart the incidents. Plus, that's what they want us to do: Drive ourselves fucking up a tree with the 'what ifs'. Twenty munny says that they're sitting in their stupid dorm right now laughing their asses off over how long we're going to hyperventilate from shock. Well, I for one am not going to be giving them what they want. This is my fucking favorite non-holiday of all and I have yet to enjoy it properly!"

"Hell to the yeah!" Riku was quick to latch onto his friend sudden exuberance. "So who are we going to prank first my good man?"

"I don't quite know yet but I'm sure we'll find someone before the day is out." Axel pointed his finger dramatically in the direction of the East Quad, the place most likely to have a large group of people since it was rapidly approaching the time when the cheerleaders would start their unsanctioned practice. "Comrade Riku, we shall not rest until each and every person on this campus has felt the heat of our utter brilliance when it come to causing chaos!"

"Idiots… We've fallen in love with two of the biggest idiots on the planet." Roxas muttered into his open palm while Sora tried and failed to not roll his eyes for what must have been the millionth time since agreeing to date the silver-haired moron in front of him. Aforementioned silver-haired idiot didn't seem to put out by Roxas' statement seeing as he was now jogging away behind Axel, no doubt getting himself involved in something that wasn't going to end well.

"Do they ever learn?" Sora asked to himself, already knowing the answer was 'no' but feeling the need to reaffirm it out loud.

"Apparently not." Roxas answered. "Whelp. We might as well follow them. Maybe this time we'll get to actually _see_ what they did to get dragged down to campus security firsthand instead of hearing about it from everyone and our mother after the fact."

"True fucking story."

* * *

"Did you just neglect to inform Riku that when you said everyone on campus would feel the intense fire of your pranking wrath you meant him as well, or did you just decide to do this spur of the moment because he unwisely fell asleep in the Rec Center after a day of running from angry mobs again?" Sora asked curiously, actually mildly interested in the answer this time.

"I don't quite remember." Axel flicked through another page in his notebook in the hopes that his missing notes would magically appear in front of him. "I think I might have been planning on getting him all along but the goals of my missions tend to get lost after the first few minutes so it's entirely possible this really was just spur of the moment. And besides, I wasn't going to prank everyone on campus anyways. I was just saying that for dramatic effect. I like having sex too much to prank either you or Roxas and I like living too much to prank either of your brothers, or Reno for that matter. Fucker holds grudges, yo… Riku I think is just collateral damage because I was bored and he was asleep and unable to defend himself, though."

"Nice to see that you take the time out to think about the status of your life every once in a blue moon." Roxas muttered, clearly bored out of his mind now that the quartet had been banned from any and all Quads for the foreseeable future due to the sudden blue color of all the people and buildings within them. Where Axel had gotten his hands on five hundred gallons of blue paint and a mini-potato launcher was a mystery to him, but he didn't think this was an April Fool's Day most of the student body were likely to forget any time soon.

"For all intents and purposes I do enjoy breathing." Axel nibbled on his bottom lip and flipped back to the front of his notebook to frantically search its pages yet again for his notes. "I don't see why everyone always seems surprised when they figure that out."

"Probably because you just launched five hundred gallons worth of blue paint and twenty gallons worth of blue dye over the majority of the campus." Sora pointed out helpfully. "These generally are not the actions of one who does not wish to be brutally murdered sooner rather than later. Do you enjoy being banned from everywhere but your dorm, the Rec Center, and your classrooms?"

Axel looked up and shrugged.

"Worth it."

Anything Sora or Roxas might have wanted to say to that was driven from their minds immediately at the random arrival of Leon and Cloud, who, while not holding hands or being attached at the lips (thankfully in the twin's opinion because they really didn't need to see that ever again in their lives), were still walking fairly close to each other.

"I still says Maria's a dick." Leon sent a rather scathing glare in the general direction of his blonde roommate, a development the twins were pleased to see because that meant the probability of Leon and Cloud suddenly feeling the urge to repeat the need to lick the back of each others' throats was slim to none. "She can't seriously be happy with allowing Kevin to raise Jason's baby on his own, while thinking that it really is his just so she can go chase her fucking lover halfway around the world because he suddenly felt the need to help the poor in India."

"She's supposed to be a cold-hearted bitch that married Kevin for his munny and er… assets for lack of a better term." Cloud huffed angrily. "It was only a matter of time before something richer and shinier caught her attention and this way she has something to fall back on in case she can't entice Jason to return home with her."

"I still say she's a fucking cunt and Kevin is better off being rid of her." Leon commented as both older boys took a seat at the table where Axel was still pouring over his notebook, Roxas and Sora were pouring over the ground and how it didn't look anything at all like the two men that they had seen kissing earlier in the day, and Riku was now snoring lightly with his head resting uncomfortably against the edge of the table. "Besides everyone knows that Missy is going to spill the beans as soon as Kevin gets pissed enough to attempt to throw her out of his home, which, I don't think I blame him on that point."

"Yeah, I guess I would kind of be pissed if I had some crazy friend of my wife's hanging around my apartment because her boyfriend was killed in a car accident that she is obsessed with proving her father caused." Cloud offered up a one-shouldered shrug. "And it's not like David's dead anyway. He's just in a hospital two towns over with amnesia and a nurse with the hugest set of knockers I've ever seen outside of porn helping his 'recuperation' if you know what I mean."

"Don't tell me you two are still obsessed with that sorry excuse for early afternoon entertainment?" Sora asked miserably. "You know, you've got Mom all hooked now and Roxas and I are about ready to shoot ourselves in the head because she never shuts up about it. If you aren't going to change the subject right now I'm going to have to hit you. It's inevitable and I will take my death like a man because _damn_ it would mean that I wouldn't have to hear about Maria or that fucking baby or stupid fucking Missy and her inappropriate love affair."

"Don't forget Sheena who is totally only dating Markus because he's trying to hide his obvious lust for Darius, his sexy ass male trainer. Only she is only using him because she doesn't want her parents to find out her about her fucking her female gynecologist." Leon added in, watching in thinly veiled amusement as Sora went into some form of mini-seizure.

"Go _home_ and talk about that shit." Roxas grumbled angrily. Honestly, first his brothers decided that scarring him for life was a good idea of a prank and then they had to go on and on about a soap opera that no sane person cared about. "Mom's probably lonely with only cuntface and dicklicker on the TV set to keep her company."

"Ooooh! I _like_ those nicknames!" Cloud clapped his hands happily. "I think I'm going to use them in reference to Sheena and Markus forever."

Sora and Roxas simultaneously slammed their heads down on the table as hard as they could, praying for unconsciousness.

Unfortunately, it didn't come.

"Anyways, we didn't come to bother you about trivial shit you don't care about this time, though being able to do so was a pleasant, yet unexpected bonus." Leon rested his elbows on the table and leant forward, lacing his fingers together as he surveyed the collection of young men before him. "Uh… Let's just leave Riku sleeping for the time being and the rest of you can tell him about our announcement later when he's more… Conscious."

Sora and Roxas lifted their heads off the table warily and Axel raised an eyebrow and put down his now ripped and battered notebook. If they didn't know any better they would have had to say that Leon sounded almost _serious_. But that was impossible. What was there for Leon to be serious about?

"An announcement?" Sora sounded slightly interested and confused, but mostly like he was going to cry because he fucking knew what his adopted brother was about to say and he didn't feel like dealing with their stupid prank anymore. In fact, he half wished he had taken Riku's course of action and had fallen asleep.

"Yes, an announcement. You know that thing where someone has something important happen to them that no one else knows about so he or she decides to tell them because it was important enough for them to want to share?" Cloud looked slightly ticked off, but that was normal. "Yes, we have an announcement and you should be grateful that you're the first ones we're telling today. In fact, you should think of yourselves as extremely special and lucky."

All Roxas and Sora felt was vaguely nauseous, but since opening their mouths to inform their brothers of said state put keeping their breakfasts firmly inside their stomachs where it belonged at risk they refrained. Something told them that vomiting nervously all over Cloud and Leon's shoes for no apparent reason would lead to some rather awkward questions and some even more awkward answers.

Axel, being the only member of the group capable of logical speech for the first time in the history of ever, gestured with his hand for Leon to spill the beans. "Now that we have established exactly what an announcement is, would you like to tell us yours?"

"It's simple, really, after a long discussion last night Cloud and I have come to the conclusion that we have some feelings between the two of us that we would like to sort out." Sora wobbled like he was going to faint and Roxas turned slightly green around the sides of his mouth, but other than that there was no outpouring of emotion from either the twins or Axel so Leon went on. "Since the majority of these feelings seemed to be more sexually based than emotionally, we have also decided that we would like to test these feelings out. To put it quite bluntly: We're dating and if you don't like it you can go fuck yourselves for all we care."

"That is all."

Whatever Leon and Cloud had been expecting as a reaction, it hadn't been the sudden outburst of hysterical laughter from both the twins and Axel. If anything they had expected one or both of the twins to faint and for Axel to be unable to hold in his smugness at being right. However, they were going to have to make do with the hysterics for now if the way Sora, Roxas, and Axel were in danger of being dumped out of their chairs was any indication.

"I don't understand." Cloud furrowed his brow in a mixture of irritation and confusion. "Here we are baring our souls to them in the hopes that we might meet some form of acceptance for our decision and all they're doing is laughing at us. This doesn't seem right somehow. I feel like _we_ should be the ones laughing."

"That's because we should be." Leon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe we broke them. I didn't think our announcement was all that surprising, but maybe to them it was enough to cause severe mental breakdown, and damn it, Mom's going to blame their instatement in the mental institution on us, isn't she?"

"Of course she is." Cloud agreed wondering if his brothers and the one friend of theirs who was awake would ever stop enough so that they could figure out why the thought of them in a meaningful relationship was suddenly something to laugh at. "Can't say I blame her. We all knew it was only a matter of time before we drove _someone_ insane. I just never thought it would have been something like this to tip the balance."

"Hmm." Leon watched in patiently as the uncontrollable giggles of his brothers and Axel finally started to die down. "If the three of you are quite done, I think we deserve an explanation as to why you just laughed in our faces when we were trying to be perfectly serious."

"That's just the thing!" Sora managed to get out through his panting and the remnants of his giggle fit. "You're not being perfectly serious!"

"Yeah, we know what you guys are trying to do here, and while it was very unappreciated that you had to resort to scaring the shit out of me and Sora earlier, we're not going to fall for your shit." Roxas finished up.

Cloud and Leon exchanged blank looks that could have meant anything from 'What the hell are these idiots blabbering on about' to 'I think I want to go out to eat tonight.'

"I don't understand." Leon tried to extend the first olive branch in the hopes of being able to fully understand the situation better. He had expected some kind of not normal reaction but this went quite a ways beyond not normal and far into a territory Leon had come to think of as insanity. "We _are_ being serious. I don't know what you guys are doing but I don't think you really understand what we're trying to tell you…"

"Oh, we know." Roxas jumped in quickly in a vague attempt to save his older brothers the embarrassment of having to think of a cover story in order to make their prank work. "You can say it now. We're all waiting for it."

"Say what?" Cloud was getting angry. Here they were trying to spill their deepest darkest secret to some of the most important people in their lives (not that they would ever tell them that. It was the thought that counted) and all they were doing was getting laughed at and accused of something that he didn't quite want to understand at this point. "What the fucking hell are you _talking _about?"

"April Fool's!" Sora jumped up and clapped his hands cheerfully. "There, I said it for you. Now you can go away and congratulate yourselves on being geniuses and whatever. We did almost fall for it after all. I guess you're better actors than we thought you were."

"You think we're trying to _prank_ you?" Cloud asked incredulously. "What the hell kind of people _are_ we that we can announce such an important thing as possibly finding our life partners and have it be taken as an _April Fool's_ prank? Well, fuck."

"The kind that loves jerking around your friends and family for your own cheap amusement." Roxas answered dully. "Is there anything else you'd like to say?"

"Yeah, all three of you are inconsiderate jerk offs." Leon responded angrily. "So what if we could have been trying to prank you? The least you could have done was be supportive on the off-chance that we weren't. What kind of assholes wouldn't want their older brothers to be happy?"

"Apparently our kind." Sora put in with an impressive scowl. "Not that I care at the moment. I think Roxas and I have suffered more than enough today without having to listen to you two pretend to be outraged at our behavior for another second."

Cloud stood and slammed his hands down on the table and that was more than enough to finally wake Riku up from his deep sleep and the young man flew to the floor as he jerked awake only to find that the way he was slumped over in his chair wasn't conducive to regaining his balance.

It also didn't help that for some reason he was now unable to remove his hand from the crotch area of his jeans, no matter how hard he tugged in the attempt.

The five boys just sat there staring at him as he wriggled around on the ground stuck between half awake and half asleep and most definitely confused as to why he was unable to get his hand to cooperate with what he wanted to do with it without yanking his pants along for the ride. It was quite funny actually and had the silent observers been in a better state of mind, there surely would have been laughter and camera phones, but since they weren't all that happened was Axel offering up a half-hearted chuckle and Leon and Cloud taking the moment to roll their eyes and make their silent escape, not wanting to deal with their brothers or their attitudes any longer.

Finally realizing that he was the center of attention and that the people who were now quite busy laughing at him were not making any moves to help him Riku became quite still.

"I feel as though I missed something here. Why are you looking at me and why do I seem to be unable to remove my hand from my private parts…? Not that I'm complaining mind you. I just would like to know if there's a logical reason for all this." He punctuated the end of his question with another slightly less forceful tug on his trapped hand.

"Oh, that? I superglued your hand to the crotch of your pants. I figured you spent enough time whacking it that I might as well save you the trouble of having to move the terrible distance for the top half of your body to the lower half next time." Axel explained patiently. "As for anything else you missed while you were unwisely passed out in the middle of the Rec Center on April Fool's Day: Cloud and Leon dropped by to try and convince us they were going out. They seem to be gone now, but I think their point was made and now we can stop worrying about it."

"Damn. I wanted to see that." Riku muttered as he gave one last half-hearted pull in the hopes that his hand would come free with the minimum of embarrassment. It didn't work and he sighed heavily. "I would chase you with the full intent of kicking your ass, but I'm sure I'll only end up looking like an even bigger idiot."

"You would be correct." Axel answered as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. "In fact, I think I need to take at least one picture for posterity's sake."

Riku scowled obligingly and raised the middle finger on the hand not currently glued to an embarrassing part of his body. Axel merely shrugged and took his picture while the twins giggled on in the background, taking this newest distraction for what it was and putting their brothers and their oddities out of their minds.

"You do know that you are now not going to be allowed to go back to your dorm until at least _someone_ sees you like this, correct?" Axel asked as he extended a hand to help his friend to his feet in a gesture of goodwill.

Riku nodded and took to peace offering, knowing that he would have done the same thing (or something else along that vein) to his friend had their positions been reversed. "Yeah, yeah. I'll get you back for it someday, too. You know that, right?"

"That's what they all say, my friend… That's what they all say…"

* * *

"I don't know whether to be amused or forlorn at the thought that our brothers have been twisted so far that they would rather believe we were pranking them rather than that we actually found something of lasting substance between us." Leon offered up sarcastically from his vantage point of leaning against the one window in their dorm room. "I'm leaning towards amused, but I think what little morals Mom managed to instill in me are trying to tell me to be forlorn."

"I'm leaning more towards pissed the hell off." Cloud offered up from the corner that housed his desk. He looked up from his laptop and sent Leon an enigmatic look. "Never mind that we _were_ trying to prank them, it's their stupid faults for having no faith in us and our ability to be functioning members of society at long last."

"I think this still counts as a kind of prank. I mean, they still don't know the truth." Leon pointed out calmly. "And this way the next time Mom or Laguna gets on our cases for being assholes we can honestly say that we _did _tell them the truth. They just didn't want to believe it and went on their merry ways. It's not our fault anymore."

"Hmmm." Cloud sighed, rolled his shoulders back twice, and turned back to his computer screen. "You know, Laguna's not really that bad a guy all things considered."

Now it was Leon's turn to send Cloud an enigmatic stare. "I never thought I'd see the day when you'd finally agree that some kind of male influence might actually be a good thing."

"Well, there's no point fighting it, is there? Who I am to have a problem with something that makes you happy, even if you won't admit that it does?" Cloud clicked a few keys on his keyboard lazily, clearly not concentrating on his work like he should. "I would be really hypocritical if I did, wouldn't I?"

"You would, but you've never seemed to care about that before." Leon smirked lightly as he caught sight of an interesting sight making its way across the common area in front of their dorm. "Hey, look at that."

Cloud swiveled around in his chair and got to his feet. "Are you just trying to change the subject or is there really something down there that's at least mildly interesting?"

"Just come look."

Cloud exhaled loudly but shuffled over anyway, breaking out into a satisfied grin when he saw exactly what it was that had caused Leon to do a complete subject change.

"Well, I guess if I were in his situation I would rather wander around in my boxers than with my hand stuck to my dick, too." Cloud murmured. "Poor Riku. I might feel a bit more sorry for him if I didn't know that he _chose_ to be Axel's friend even knowing what that idiot was capable of when bored."

"Yeah, he wasn't forced into it like we were." Leon agreed in his own little way and he looked over at his boyfriend, both men sharing a much softer look this time. "And before you get started, yes, he's an okay kind of guy, and I guess he really is reasonably intelligent. There was no way the twins figured out that we were trying to mess with them on their own."

"True shit." Cloud pushed off the window sill and went to collapse down onto his bed. "Now it's your turn to come over here."

"Why?" Leon raised an eyebrow in amusement as Cloud stuck his tongue out at him. "You got something you want to show me, too?"

"Would you like to get laid for the second time today or not?"

"Yes, please."

And with that Leon had quickly moved from his post at the window to a much more pleasurable post on top of his boyfriend.

"You do know that Mom's going to be more pissed about this than she would have been if we had just continued on without telling them, right?" Cloud murmured into his boyfriend's throat as his hands went to slide up under the brunette's shirt easily.

Leon paused and looked down at his lover, their eyes meeting and holding, each one with a glint of something that could only be described as juvenile mirth reflected within.

"So fucking worth it."

* * *

_**A/N: **So there you have it. And the story is at long last drawing to a close. Two more chapters until graduation and then an epiloge. Not quite sure how I feel about that as of yet. The good news is that I already have a new project in the works once this one is over. So three more real chapters, an epiloge and then I'd say a few weeks of break to get my shit together with maybe a few one shots for flavor and then another Leon/Cloud epic. Considering this is the only fic I have even come **close **to finishing I am super excited!_

_So... You know what to do. You all make me soooooo unbelievably happy! ^_^_


	16. Day TwoHundredTwentyThree: Yay, Plot!

_**A/N: **And we are drawing ever nearer to the end... And this excites me. This excites me so much that I am not going to prattle on above the chapter for once. As always, enjoy!_

**

* * *

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**Chapter Thirteen:**

_**Day Two-Hundred and Twenty Three: And It All Starts to Make a Little Bit of Sense… Maybe**_

"One more month and then they'll be out of here for good." Sora sighed and shifted on his bed while his usual group of friends and family looked up from their various perches throughout the small dorm room. "I know I'm supposed to be all happy and shit for them, but I think I'm going to miss them too much to be as happy as I should be. They make our lives a living hell, but it's still more fun than it has any right to be."

"True story." Roxas spoke up from where he was sprawled on his stomach in the middle of the room with his Organic Chemistry notes spread out around him. He looked up and gave his twin a mildly confused look. "But what does that have to do with anything?"

Sora shrugged and rolled over so that he was staring directly up at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. "Dunno. Just a random thought I guess. Anyways, it's hard _not_ to think of them these days, what with everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off because that stupid deadline is _also_ a month away."

"It's not like you two aren't going to see them again ever." Axel pointed out as he fiddled with something on Riku's computer. "Your mom's been trying for years to get them to completely move out of the house and they won't. You'll see them on weekends and holidays and whenever they feel like bothering you for the sake of bothering you."

"But it won't be the same." Sora whined and stuck out his lower lip in a pout. "That's them bothering us on _their_ terms. And besides, what are they going to have to bother us over? They'll be so busy working and earning a living that they won't have time to drive to campus on a whim to see us again."

"I'd say that would be lucky." Riku grumbled, saddened in his own way that two of the best brothers (and he really did think of Leon and Cloud as his own brothers despite the shit they put him through on almost a daily basis, not that he would ever have admitted it) he'd ever had were going to drift off into the outside world once and for all. "But, hey, there have never been laws that we can't go visit them. When was the last time you two went out of your way and visited them at their apartment instead of waiting for them to show up at the house?"

"Now that you mention it…" Roxas furrowed his brow in thought. "I don't think I've ever been to their apartment, excepting the day they signed for it. I don't think there was ever any need. They'd always show up at home sooner or later. And during the school year they're always here."

"Well, that answers one question." Axel grunted and sent the computer a dirty look before starting a new game of Solitaire.

"Yeah, sure it does." Riku said sarcastically as he dug through the folds of his blankets in search of the research for his English paper. Not only was the end of Leon and Cloud's reign of torture on the school coming to an end in a month, so was the beginnings of finals and the professors had all jumped on board to giving the students assignment after assignment to get them ready.

"It does!" Axel protested as he clicked the computer mouse a bit harder than warranted in his determination to finally win a hand. "I've always wondered why Leon and Cloud bothered wasting munny on keeping an apartment when they just move back to campus every year and now I know the answer."

"It took you four years of watching them cart clothing and bed linens back and forth for you to finally figure out why it's important for them to keep both their apartment and to be on campus with everyone else?" Sora asked incredulously. "That's just sad."

"Hey, I've asked the both of you on numerous occasions and I've never once gotten an answer outside of 'because they want to.' Can you really blame me for taking so long when all I had was my own brain power and ADD to help me?" Axel pushed the chair away from the computer desk and turned to face the center of the room.

"This is true." Sora muttered to himself while his twin rolled his eyes and sent Axel a look of irritation.

"How hard is coming to the conclusion that they like their privacy at times, but also like to be close to their friends and family?" Roxas grumbled as his viciously flipped through s notebook in search of the one piece of information he needed that he didn't seem to have written down. "As weird as everyone seems to think they are, they really are normal deep down underneath the posturing and barely suppressed rage."

Axel shrugged lightly. "I'm starting to see that more and more. Too bad it took secretly digging into their personal lives to come to that conclusion."

"You know something." Sora sat up at long last and every eye in the room turned to him. "As badly as this whole thing could have turned out, and as scared as I am to know what Leon and Cloud's reactions are going to be once this all gets out in the open, I'm almost glad this happened. I mean, it's led to quite a few good things, on top of all the bad shit."

"Yeah, like Leon's now getting along with me instead of trying to kill me every few days." Axel put in. "I can't even begin to say how much that means to me at least."

"And if it hadn't been for Leon trying to get to know Axel better, they wouldn't have been put in the hospital and I wouldn't have given in to Riku and I'd probably still be trying to deny him." Sora added.

"And that only happened because Axel helped Cloud and our family out on New Year's when Sephiroth finally showed his true colors." Roxas also sat up and sent his boyfriend a gentle look. "Which wouldn't have happened if Rinoa and her lackeys hadn't recruited him to turn Cloud's affections elsewhere. As shitty as that really was, I guess I can't be too mad if good came of it."

"Don't forget about Leon and his dad either." Riku piped up quickly. "Granted, people didn't need to be going through Leon's personal life anyways, but now Leon _and _Cloud finally have the dad we all know they've secretly been wanting. As strange as that working out really is."

"Okay, okay, everyone stop!" Three sets of curious and confused gazes turned to look over at Axel. "If anyone says anything else we'll be severe danger of learning some kind of lesson about taking the good with the bad and shit like that. So just stop! I didn't come here to learn. I came here to pretend to study while waiting for the first opportunity to convince Riku to bail with me in order to cause some havoc or something."

"Ugh!" Riku grunted and threw his hands over his head, landing on his back in his bed. "We sounds like some kind of cheesy after school special. If some big-shot basketball star shows up to warn us about the hazards of drugs and unprotected sex I think I'm going to have to kill myself."

"Aw, but, Riku! The first step is _always_ admitting you have a problem, and who better to admit that to than some famous stranger who will then proceed to judge you while secretly partaking in the very thing he is judging you on?" To Axel's credit he barely squeaked when Riku leapt across the room to drag him to the floor where they then proceeded to wrestle around while Roxas screamed obscenities and attempted to save his anal retentive notes.

Sora merely laughed and shook his head. "Finally… A _normal_ day."

* * *

"So now what? We're out of horrendously embarrassing things to spread around campus." Larxene complained as she flipped a wayward strand of blonde back into her immaculately slicked back style. "At least… I think we are…"

"What was the purpose of spreading around horrendously embarrassing things in the first place?" Demyx wondered aloud from his perch on a nearby window seat with one knee curled up to his chest with his chin resting on it. "I mean other than the sheer pleasure you seem to have gotten out of it that is."

"Because it's easier to make sure two people don't end up together when they're mad at each other or others, mmkay?" Larxene offered up in a sickly sweet voice as she began picking at her nails. "That and I did manage to glean some form of pleasure from the proceedings, not that it's any of your business."

Demyx snorted quietly and went back to gazing blankly out the window.

"I think the real question should be: Why the hell do I not have Cloud yet?" Sephiroth spoke up from the dark corner he was standing in, arms crossed over his chest and a hard edge to his gaze. "If I remember correctly, I was promised that I would have him long before now, and yet he is still not mine."

"Don't you think that he would be if he wanted to be?" Rinoa offered up from where she was curled up on the couch with her boyfriend. "Short of literally tying him up and shoving him in sack, I don't see how that's going to work out for you."

"That could be arranged…" Larxene was cut off by a set of scathing glares coming from Demyx and Zexion's corner. "What? Oh fine, no potentially involving the cops any more so than usual. So boring."

"I'm not opposed to someone getting arrested, if that changes anything." Seifer spoke up from his place next to his girlfriend. "In fact, can we find a way to get _Leon _arrested? Then everyone's problems will be solved. Cloud will be free for Seph to take and we win the bet because there's no way they can get together with one party in jail. Plus I get the satisfaction of getting rid of the asshole."

"_Seifer_." Rinoa elbow the blonde man in the side. "No one's going to jail, not because of this. End of story, and no one's getting kidnapped either so you can all just drop that plan, too."

"Well, look at who's Miss Moral High Ground now." Rufus sneered from the armchair he had commandeered earlier. "If I recall correctly you were the one that got us all here in the hopes that we could manipulate this bet to go your way. The way I see it, you don't get to be placing restrictions now. It's far too late."

"I didn't think it would _go_ this far!" Rinoa snapped, clearly not pleased with the company she was surrounded by. "I thought it would be a good joke. Something to get back at Leon for breaking up with me because of his secret feelings for his best friend. I didn't want to ruin anyone's lives over this."

"This is what you get for playing with fire, little girl." Larxene cooed. "Sometimes you just can't help but get burned."

"Shut _up_, Larxene." Demyx scowled. "You're not helping."

"Why are you even here, Dem?" Larxene asked curiously. "You're on the other side if I remember correctly. Shouldn't you be out plotting ways to take us down?"

Demyx merely shrugged. "Right now I'm just here to look out for my own interests. I don't even care if I lose the bet portion of this anymore. One side's gotta win, right? So why pick just one when it's to the point that it truly does have the potential to go either way?"

"Don't you just have all your bases covered?" Seifer growled out from his corner of the coach, Rinoa having moved away out of his reach after her earlier outburst. "What if we were to say that we didn't want you here because you could be spying on us for the other side?"

"Then I would say 'tough shit' because I was the one that gave you half of your information and you would be wise not to forget that." Demyx grinned lazily. "In any case, I'm here and I'm not going to be leaving any time soon so you might as well get down to what you wanted to discuss today."

"Yes, Demyx's potential duplicity is not what we were called here to discuss on this occasion." Zexion spoke up for the first time since arriving. "In fact, neither I nor he were informed of the purpose of this meeting. I am assuming, of course, that there is one?"

Rinoa shrugged while Larxene giggled maliciously in the background. The brunette sent her a confused look but turned back to Demyx and Zexion with true confusion on her features. "I don't know why we're here. Seifer and I got a text yesterday from an unknown number with the time and place. We thought you might have sent it because you found something else we can use."

Zexion sighed and shook his head, staring now at Larxene who was picking at the hem of her skirt while humming happily to herself. "While we do not know what this is about, I think that _you_, Larxene, do. Care to let us in on the joke?"

The blonde giggled once more and rolled her eyes. "Isn't it obvious? We've certainly done our jobs very well this time around, boys, don't you think? It's been _ages_ since the whole campus has been up in arms like this. And it's all thanks to us. The boss must be so proud of us that he's going to hand deliver our next missions in person!"

"What are you going on about?" Rufus asked haughtily. "No one tells _me_ what to do, or give me missions. I am in this for myself, not some idiot who's been standing idly by allowing us to do all the dirty work for him."

"Ha. We're _all _in it for ourselves." Larxene waved her hand dismissively. "This makes us no different from anyone else on campus. We just happen to be a little bit more organized about it, which is something that is going to come in handy since we have a very obvious lack of inside intel, which is something the other side _does_ have, what with Axel and Riku, the twins and Aerith over there feeding them information."

Rufus offered up a glare at her words, but didn't say anything else. She did have a point. It wasn't like they had anyone who was even remotely close to the Strifes anymore, not after the shit Seifer and Sephiroth had pulled on Thanksgiving and the other shit Sephiroth had pulled on New Years.

An uncomfortable silence fell upon the group as no one could think of anything else to say that wouldn't result in some kind of argument. They might have been down to their last chances where the bet was concerned, but that didn't mean they were ready to give up just yet. If they ended up arguing this far into it, people were going to walk out and any slim hope they may have had at lasting out for another month would be long gone. They had too much invested to risk that.

"So when is the 'boss' of your supposed to get here?" Seifer inquired gruffly after about five minutes of dead silence had passed.

Larxene shrugged happily, still picking at her hem. "The boss makes his own time. A time that it not for us to know or question, so deal."

"I don't like this." Rinoa voiced her opinion from her side of the couch. "We are doing quite fine on our own. We don't need someone else coming in and telling us what to do. Especially not someone with their own agenda. This is already so far out of control it's disgusting."

"What _you _unfortunately do not know is that you never had control to begin with." Zexion pointed out. "There is not a single instance on this campus that the boss does not know about. If you so much as sneezed in the library once upon a time he knows not only that you did it, but on what book was so unlucky as to be on the receiving end. He has been pulling the strings for this from the very start, and you have all fallen brilliantly into place."

"But why?" Rinoa was quick to ask. "Why the hell should he care? Why would he want this?"

"To cause chaos for the sake of causing chaos." Most of the room jumped at the sound of this newest male voice and several heads whipped around to see who was silhouetted in the doorway. Xemnas merely smiled and waved as a ripple of shock went around the room. "Really, why does everyone assume the antagonist has to have a motive? Why can't we just enjoy setting a grand scheme into motion simply for the sake of watching it twist completely out of all control? It's no fun when there's more than entertainment at stake. Then you have to go and make things all personal, and who _really_ wants that after all? It's a lot of hassle with little reward."

"_You're_ the one that's behind this?" Rinoa gasped as she clutched impotently at her neckline.

"I thought you were just batshit crazy. I didn't know you could have the clarity to pull off something this big." Seifer commented bitterly, taking his surprise as a personal affront against himself as usual. "And exactly what the hell is it that you're trying to pull off anyways? I wouldn't think you gave two shits as to what happens to Leon and Cloud."

"Oh, don't mistake me, my friend; I don't give a rat's ass as to Cloud and Leon's relationship. They could have been fuck buddies or what have you for years for all the difference it makes to me. Hell, they could engage in an irreparable fight tomorrow and I wouldn't lose a wink." Xemnas smiled a little too widely then, in a way that drive home the fact that he might not be quite all there in the head. "I just so enjoy watching everyone scramble around wasting their little lives on poking their noses in where their noses don't belong."

"He fucking _is_ batshit crazy!" Rufus got to his feet angrily. "What kind of idiot starts something like this without some kind of personal motive for it? You want something. I don't know exactly what it is, but you want something and you are going to tell us what it is right now, damn it!"

"He wants the same thing I want." Larxene piped up cheerfully, having finally given up on unraveling her skirt and having moved on the studying the back of her right hand. "To see every pathetic, little student in this god-forsaken place focused intently on something that means nothing at all. Honestly, what is it to any of you whether Cloud and Leon fuck or not? Don't you see? This means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Nothing at all! And here you all are wasting your time, your munny, destroying your own relationships in the hopes of what? Winning some quick cash? Well, pardon me if I take a second to laugh at you because I find this highly ridiculous."

"This is more than a way to gain wealth." Sephiroth's voice was cold and devoid of anything that could even remotely be taken as human as he pushed himself up off the wall. "This is a way to turn the tides of fate."

"Bullshit!" Larxene cackled wildly. "I call bullshit! Maybe to you this is more than munny, more than glory, but to them this is nothing. Petty revenge, intense greed, a manifestation of jealousy, it's all here staring us in the face in the guise of some kind of game. In fact, I think you're the only psycho in this place that had a genuine stake in the outcome. If the other side loses, then you have only to gain, and gain you shall if we have our way."

"I'm listening." And Sephiroth leaned in, his jewel bright eyes swimming with the beginnings of interest, and of something much more sinister. Something better off left untouched.

"Oh joy!" Xemnas clapped his hands together once. "A man after my own heart. Someone who will stop at nothing to succeed where others have thought he would fail. And you will be rewarded for your patience, we all will. The tides are coming together at long last. With a month left we are not the only ones falling to desperation."

"This is insanity!" Rinoa yelled. "Cloud and Leon are good people, despite what Leon did to me. I know he never would have hurt me had there been no other way. They don't deserve to be treated like this! Discussed as though they are something to be owned, as though they are pieces to be moved around on your fucking chessboard, and threatened when they are not here to hear it. This isn't right, this has gone too far, and this _is_ going to stop. I started this group and I'm going to end it."

"By doing what?" Larxene flipped her head cockily. "Leaving? We can do this just fine without you. Telling someone? Who would you tell, and what would you tell them? You don't know anything they don't know. In fact, you would just be opening yourself up to your enemies for them to do whatever they want with you. Honestly, you can't seriously think you have friends on the other side still. You have gone far past that point."

"I could tell Leon." Rinoa threatened.

"And then we would win and you have taught us nothing." Zexion pointed out blandly. "Take two seconds to think about that course of action. By telling Leon you would be strengthening his resolve in resisting his roommate's dubious charms. He has apparently been doing this perfectly fine on his own, but knowing that by following his obvious inclinations he would be giving in to the pressures of his friends instead of the pressures of his own feelings and the feelings of said roommate would push him to do the opposite. He is not a man that would fall in love because it was the easiest course to pursue."

The room's occupants looked at him in mostly mild confusion for a moment before Demyx took pity on them.

"He means that if you tell Leon then he's going to take a 'you can't make me if I don't wanna' stance and, like the mature five year old he is, he will then refuse to so much as glance in Cloud's general direction because having us win is better than being forced into something when he isn't ready for it."

Larxene nodded her agreement and sent a smile in Demyx's direction. "Thanks for the translation, dearie."

Demyx shrugged. "No problem. I'm used to it by now."

"So, Ms. Heartilly, what are you going to do now?" Xemnas asked. "If you wish to leave, then I have nothing against it, but I do need to know now what side of the fence you're on. Wouldn't want you giving certain people information that they don't need to be having after all. However, if you do choose to stay, then you _are_ going to stay, and you are going to help us without complaints or attempts at sabotage."

"And how the hell are you supposed to be able to tell if I'm not just going to screw up your plans?" Rinoa asked haughtily, more than ready to take up a position in whatever Xemnas was scheming for the sole purpose of being able to stop him.

"You're right… We can't know." Xemnas waved his hand through the air lazily. "Would you like to show yourself to the door, or shall I have Larxene do the honors?"

Rinoa huffed and bounced to her feet. She hovered for a moment in the center of the room, clearly torn between saying something more and just leaving. It was a menacingly gleeful look from Larxene that finally made up her mind and she stomped out the door without a second look back.

Larxene dropped down further into her seat and pouted. "Damn. And I wanted to be the one to throw her out… Oh well, you win some, you lose some. So back to the matter at hand…"

"What exactly is it that you want us to do?"

* * *

"Tifa and Aerith said it was an emergency." Riku looked back to make sure that the three boys following behind him were close enough to be able to hear. "They didn't say exactly what the emergency was, but they sounded upset."

"And what are the odds that this has absolutely nothing to do with our brothers and the fictional relationship?" Roxas griped from his position towards the back of the group. "I thought you said today was going to be _normal_, Sora."

"I thought it was!" Sora protested as he allowed his boyfriend to drag him through the crowded campus without much resistance, having already given in to being forced to do things he didn't want to do by now. "Shit Cloud and Leon aren't even _here_ today. They went to an amusement park with Yuffie one hundred miles away for god's sake!"

"That doesn't mean that something can't have happened concerning them." Axel pointed out quickly. "The world doesn't stop because they aren't here to witness it. Are you sure neither Tifa nor Aerith said anything about what happened?"

"Very sure. They just said that they needed us, and anyone else that was sympathetic to Cloud and Leon to get their asses to Aerith's house as fast as possible." Riku hit a button on his key ring and his car beeped happily and the locks popped open. "I didn't think it was a request for an open forum for questions."

Sora and Roxas just exchanged resigned looks and took up places in the backseat, going along for the ride for the time being. It wasn't like they were going to have much of a choice in the matter.

"You know, it is kind of odd that there would be an emergency today." Axel spoke up after a moment of silence while Riku maneuvered the car out of the parking lot and in the general direction of Aerith and Zack's house. "Unless Rinoa and them are planning on driving for three hours to spy on them at an amusement park, I can't even begin to _guess_ what could be so urgent that we'd have to drop everything and run to deal with it."

"Well, unless one of them is planning on paying my gas and my ticket to get into the park, _I'm_ not driving three hours to save their asses." Riku muttered to himself.

There was another short silence.

"Dude, it would so be worth it."

"Yeah it would. They got a new ride that's supposed to be so wicked that you'll wonder when the bottom half of your spine decided to fuse together!" Axel and Riku grinned and exchanged high fives as the twins rolled their eyes from their positions in the back.

"Nice to see that saving our brother's from some form of unsubstantiated threat is second place only to your need to ride a new roller coaster." Roxas sighed heavily and his twin followed suit. "And the sad thing is that I didn't even have a moment in which I even _remotely_ thought you could have been joking."

"Meh. Cloud and Leon can take care themselves." Riku glanced at the twins in the rearview mirror before turning back to the road. "Besides, what kind of trouble can they possibly get into in a family-oriented fun environment?"

"That was the world's stupidest question and as such, it does not merit an answer." Sora rolled his eyes for what must have been the twentieth time that morning. "Honestly, what kind of trouble _couldn't_ they get into in a family-oriented fun environment? Assuming they grew bored of scaring the pants off small children and spitting onto the heads of innocent passersby from atop roller coasters and bridges of course."

Axel winced. "Ah… Now that you mention it... Maybe someone _should_ have gone with them. If only to be the eyes and ears for your mother as she starts to gather together a plan to torture them into infinity for the hell they are already causing."

"Yeah, you have fun with that one. I enjoy living too much to even have the slightest inclination to want to go to an amusement park with them ever again." Sora crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly. "I swore to Mom that the last time, in which I had about one-third of my hair removed in a haunted house when Cloud decided the chainsaw man just wasn't real enough for his tastes, was most definitely the last time I was going to go to another amusement park if there was even a small chance in hell that one or both of them were going to be there."

"That sounds more like you should have sworn never to go if Cloud isn't there." Riku pointed out. "And when was this anyways? I don't remember you ever having a gaping bald spot in your hair."

"We were five, and the reason he nor I will ever go with Leon again either is because while Cloud was hacking away at Sora's hair Leon was busy chasing me through the park with a set of sparklers saying that if I didn't help him shoot roman candles at people on rides, then I would get the sparkler shoved up my nose." Roxas added and the boys in the front seat cringed. That sounded a lot like Leon and Cloud and they then made their own resolutions never to set foot in any place that had rides, children, and Leon and Cloud in common. "And, because I know you want to ask… No, I do not know where Leon acquired roman candles and sparklers in an amusement park close to Halloween, and, quite frankly, I gave up trying to find out long ago. It's not worth the headache."

The boys in the front nodded weakly. That was an understatement if they ever heard one.

The rest of the ride was spent in a silence so deep that not even the radio could penetrate it as each boy took a moment to visualize exactly what kind of havoc Leon and Cloud and _Yuffie_ (how they had forgotten about her was a mystery) were wrecking miles and miles away from home.

"Hey, wait a second… That's Rinoa's car!" Sora and Roxas perked up at Axel's stunned declaration. "What the hell is _she _doing here?"

"Only one way to find out." Riku responded grimly as he pulled up to the curb in front of Aerith and Zack's house. "Well, at least we know for a fact that this has something to do with the bet."

The two boys in the backseat grumbled sarcastic agreements and the four boys got out of the car and made their way up the walkway to the door, Axel taking the initiative and ringing the bell.

Aerith was the one to answer the door and as much as they wanted to jump right into asking questions, the look on her face was enough to restrain them. Her lips were turned downward in an uncharacteristic frown and the pale skin at the corners of her eyes were pinched tight as though she were thinking a mile a minute, and none of those thoughts were good.

She moved gracefully out of their way, motioning for them to make their way into the living room while she took a different path to the kitchen where they could hear Zack's semi-quiet murmur and a responding female voice. The four boys exchanged wary glances and made their way into the proffered room, relieved to see only Tifa and Kairi waiting for them inside.

"What's going on?" Sora was the first to ask a question as he made his way over to Kairi's side.

The red-head shrugged. "I don't know much myself other than Rinoa showed up on Aerith's doorstep about half an hour ago freaking out about something. I'm guessing it has something to do with Cloud and Leon though."

"Well, of course it does." Roxas responded angrily. "_Everything_ has to do with Cloud and Leon now. You can't so much as walk to the Rec Center for a bite to eat without running into someone that wants to talk shop about them."

"Could it be a trap?" Axel asked next, ignoring his boyfriend's foul mood and directing this question towards Tifa. "Could she had come here looking for some kind of sympathy in the hopes that we'll spill the beans and give her some bit of information she needs?"

Tifa shook her head. "No, I don't think that's it. She seemed genuinely upset and concerned from what I saw earlier and you know Aerith would never give up Leon and Cloud without a damned good reason to do so, and Rinoa doesn't count as that reason. There's something going on here that's a bit beyond her trying to spy on us I think."

"She's not as bad as everyone keeps making her out to be." Kairi stated. "In fact, I don't think her heart was in this even in the beginning, but, like the rest of us, it was something to do. No one predicted how out of control this was going to end up, least of all her. It's not going to hurt to hear her out."

"Hmmm." Riku glanced over his shoulder at the empty doorway behind him. "But it might not help either. There are tons of reasons why she might want Leon or Cloud to get hurt, and her just being a 'good' girl doesn't mean that she's capable of overcoming bitterness or petty jealousy. Hell hath no fury and all that."

"Women are a lot more complicated than that, Riku." Tifa cut in. "We can feel bitter and jealous about not getting to be with someone anymore, but at the same time, that doesn't always mean that we're going to be out for blood just because a boy broke up with us. Especially not if they did it nicely and with on offer of friendship like Leon did, and doubly not if we already have another boy in the wings waiting to take over."

"Tifa has a point." Kairi offered up. "Girls do things for lots of complicated reasons, but there isn't really a lot that's complicated about this. If a girl doesn't want to be friends with a guy, she'll make reasons to avoid him. Up until the bet got too far out of hand, Leon and Rinoa were actually pretty good friends. We tend to save the backstabbing for the other girls. They're much more fun because they fight back."

Riku and Axel stood there looking confused while Roxas and Sora merely shrugged.

"Sora, Roxas… What are you two doing here?" The twins looked up as their cousin stuck his head in the room. "I didn't think you would care about this kind of stuff."

"Ugh. We _don't_." Roxas exhaled heavily and plopped down along with his twin onto the sofa. "Try telling these morons that, though. They're trying to convince us that by following them to all these meetings, we're somehow helping Cloud and Leon keep their innocence or something intact."

"You never know. You might just be helping your brothers in a way." Zack moved fully into the living room and took up a perch on the arm of a nearby recliner. "Unless you don't want to help them, in which case I don't see why we can't go to the mall or something until the girls are done crying in the kitchen."

"She's still crying?" Tifa asked, clearly concerned as both she and Kairi got to their feet. "She's been crying since she got here."

"Of course I have." And she looked it, too, with her usually bright brown eyes red-rimmed and still watery, he mascara running slightly from the corners of her eyes and her clothing rumpled in a way that suggested long hours of grabbing at it. Rinoa did not look her best at the moment. "I made a stupid mistake and now Cloud and Leon are going to suffer for it and I'm going to know forever that it was always my fault!"

"That _what_ was always your fault?" Axel asked, quick to get to the point. He never had been one for pandering to over-emotional females. Just another reason why he was perfectly happy being not only gay, but also stuck together with Roxas for however long it took until the other boy got tired of him. At least with Roxas there was no drama… Or at least no drama concerning him personally. His family was another story all together.

"Whatever it is that Xemnas is trying to get the others to do!" Rinoa wiped a trail of tears from her cheek and sent Aerith a reassuring smile as the older woman placed a gentle arm around her shoulders. "He's over at Sephiroth's right now with everyone else planning something to break Leon and Cloud up for good."

"What!?" Sora and Roxas leapt to their feet in one fluid motion, both instantly concerned for their brothers.

"They can't do that!" Sora continued to yell as Roxas nodded vigorously behind him. "First of all, there's nothing there to break up in the first place. Second of all, this is our family, damn it, and we are not going to just sit back and let people run roughshod all over us. They have no right to mess with us."

"They don't have a right, but they're going to do it anyways." Kairi pointed out unhappily. "This has gone so much further than just some stupid bet. This is a group of people out to destroy _lives_. And what the fuck does Xemnas have to do with any of this?"

"I don't really know." Rinoa sniffled once and then straightened up, ready to deal with the mess she had helped to create once and for all. "He just showed up today cackling about how he had been the cause behind this all along and how Demyx, Zexion, and Larxene had been doing whatever it is that they've been doing because he told them to."

"That's because they have been." Axel stated solemnly. "I didn't think this was something that would have caught Xemnas' attention… Or, maybe I just didn't want to think that it did… Roxas, I don't think I need to tell you that this isn't good."

"No, it's not." Roxas chewed thoughtfully on his thumbnail for a second. "Demyx is the most rational one of the bunch… Could we possibly go to him?"

Axel shook his head. "I don't think that's going to work. Apparently he's been a double agent this whole time. Really, he's not the same Demyx he used to be before he started dating Zexion. He was capable of seeing reason back then, now all he sees is protecting and helping his boyfriend."

"Fuck." Roxas switched to nibbling on his index finger. "I guess Xigbar and Xaldin are out of the question as well?"

"Correct." Axel ran a hand though his hair nervously. "There is no one left that I can think of who would even be mildly sympathetic to helping Leon and Cloud. Most of them either don't care enough to be anything other than neutral and those that aren't, really aren't too enamored of your brothers at the moment for various reasons."

"Naminé!" Roxas suddenly shouted, jolting all those watching the cryptic exchange back into the present. "She might not have ever technically joined, but Xemnas listened to her sometimes and he never was above using her if he had to. If they can have double agents, then why can't we?"

"What the hell are you two _talking_ about?" Sora demanded.

"Yeah!" Kairi cross her arms and stood next to her best friend and stared at Roxas and Axel waiting for an explanation to be offered. "And what does my sister have to do with any of this? She's not even on campus today. She went to take our mom to the doctor's because Mom's car is in the shop."

Roxas shot a look at his boyfriend and the red-head just shrugged. "They were bound to find out sooner or later what with Xemnas' fragile mental state and all. We might as well just tell them."

The little blonde nodded. "For me it started in the summer before our sophomore year in high school, the summer when Axel moved in next door and tried to blow up our puppies. Sitting at the local jail with him waiting for Cloud to come get us because Mom didn't trust Axel not to run away before she had the chance to punish him herself, we started talking. To be perfectly truthful, I didn't even like those damn dogs anyways. They were always eating my shoes."

"They ate mine, too, but you didn't see me complaining. They were cute, and they made Mom happy." Sora accused, unable to hold back from arguing with his sibling even when faced with an emergency. "Even Leon didn't get pissed like you used to and they ate his best leather jacket once."

"Leon having more self control than Roxas is not new news." Riku pointed out. "The man has the patience of a saint if he's managed to live with Cloud for this long without killing him or committing suicide."

"Yeah, okay, whatever." Roxas brushed off his twin's comments and his twin's boyfriend's statement of the obvious. "Anyways, the reason behind Axel attempting to spray paint innocent, little doggies was because he was a part of a group of people who enjoyed playing pranks on the community in general. It sounded interesting so I signed up. Didn't you ever notice that things stopped exploding so much for about two or so months? I was smart enough not to ever allow fire near explosive components."

"What? Why did you never tell me about this?" Sora placed his hands on his hips and sent his twin the dirtiest look his could muster. "I thought we were supposed to tell each other everything."

"I was fifteen and sick of following you and Riku to the mall every day or risk never going anywhere because we were only allowed one ride from our brothers per day." Roxas sent a glare right back at his twin. "Besides, you really can't tell me that you've told me every little thing that has ever happened to you? Surely you went through a rebellious phase somewhere between the volunteer work and moonlighting as the poster child for good parenting at Mom's social functions."

Sora bit his lip and shifted his weight from foot to foot nervously.

"Wow… You really never thought about doing something wild, crazy, and secret?" Axel asked incredulously. "Damn…."

"Hey!" Now it was Riku's turn to glare indignantly at a friend. "I _helped_ you with that puppy thing! Why didn't you tell _me_?"

"Because I didn't want to get into _your_ pants." Axel pointed out, perfectly logically. "Sorry, Riku, but you're just not my type… And as Roxas mentioned earlier, you and I share the ability of not recognizing when fire is not only unnecessary, but dangerous."

"Not the point!" Tifa jumped in, ready to head off the change in the direction of the conversation quickly so they could get to the heart of the matter. "The point is trying to figure out what we're dealing with so we can fix this."

"Well… Naminé caught us trying to rig a device to launch watermelons at passing cars from her backyard one day and the whole story came out because at the time _I_ wanted to get into _her_ pants." Roxas admitted as Axel offered up a jealous huff in the background. "So she hung out with us for a while and helped and eventually decided that a life of pranking wasn't for her around the same time I did, and that was the end of that, high school started up and the rest is history."

"But Xemnas always had a kind of soft spot for her, and I can't blame her. The only other girl in their little organization was Larxene, and she's hardly soft and cuddly." Axel added in. "Naminé was a good decoy, a good cover. She could walk up to whoever had been harmed by our pranks and smooth everything over easily with a smile and wink. For the short period of time she was actively trying to get in, she was invaluable."

"But will she want to do that again?" Kairi asked hesitantly. "I mean, I wasn't told anything about this either, but if I remember correctly, she wasn't exactly her usual ball of sunshine and roses around the house during this period of our summer."

"She doesn't have to." Aerith stated matter of factly. "No one has to do anything they don't want to, but we still should explain the situation to her fully and then let her make her own decisions. I know this is a foreign concept to most people since those of you who enjoy betting on other people's love lives seem to enjoy taking the choice out of life, but most of the time people can make the right choices on their own with only the bare facts to help them."

"Ouch, Aerith. Unnecessary." Tifa winced. "True, but highly unnecessary."

"Well, I figured _someone_ has to remind you why you all got into this in the first place." Aerith smiled to soften the blow of her words. "Changing motives halfway through the game as a result of everything spiraling beyond control isn't a good reason to suddenly turn into a martyr fighting for the better good you know."

"Aerith, honey… What did we say about judging them when there were more than two of them that were fully capable of kicking my ass in the room?" Zack asked nervously from his seat on the arm of his chair. "You know they're going to try and kill _me_ for this because to hit you would be to hit an angel."

"Thanks for saying that, sweetheart, but no one is going to be hitting anyone." Aerith lead the still mildly distraught Rinoa over to take a seat in the armchair Kairi had abandoned earlier. "Now, Rinoa, is there anything you can tell us that you think might help? I know they seem to have a completely different plan now, but anything you know could turn out to be immensely helpful."

Rinoa nodded slowly and bit her bottom lip in thought. "I really don't know anything. Um… There was talking about Sephiroth maybe kidnapping Cloud, but I don't think even Xemnas is going to allow that. That's too close to bringing the authorities in for any of their comfort."

"That doesn't mean he's not going try it on his own!" Sora and Roxas shared horrified looks before the brunette turned, red-faced, to glare at Rinoa. "He's fucking insane and you guys were letting him sit in on your meetings to break apart our brothers through any means necessary? How the hell did you think you were going to stop him if he decided that you guys weren't going fast enough for him? He doesn't care about a bet, he has his own fucking agenda and you were just _letting_ him get access to plans that had a high probability of leaving Cloud open to him? Fuck!"

"He's just a guy who's obsessed with something that he can't have." Rinoa shot back. "Who cares if he gets it in his head to approach Cloud or whatever? What's the worst that could happen? Cloud gets pissed and they stop being friends? That's already happened in case you didn't notice."

Rinoa's sudden burst of confidence disappeared as Roxas and Sora attempted to take flying leaps in her general direction only to be held back by their reluctant boyfriends.

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Roxas screeched, his twin so far beyond logical thought that he was only capable of yelling various obscenities while attempting to elbow Riku in the nose. "Cloud has every right to be pissed at Sephiroth and that psycho has every right to be in _jail_ not out there plotting the downfall of my fucking _brother_!"

"Riku, Axel, take them outside!" Zack jumped up and went to help shove the fighting twins out of the living room and through the front door, slamming and locking it behind him as he went. Those left in the living room just stared in shock and disbelief as the sounds of muffled yelling continued to drift in, too far away to be heard properly, but just loud enough so that they could tell that Sora and Roxas were probably angrier than they ever had been.

"What was that all about?" Tifa wondered aloud as a general shudder went through the assembly.

As it turned out, suddenly nobody really wanted to know.

* * *

"Let me go, damn it!" Sora seemed to have found something more in his vocabulary than curse words and he kicked viciously at the air in an attempt to free himself from his boyfriend's strong grasp. "I'm going to rip the stupid straight out of her skull along with every last strand of her hair!"

"Sora, that's not going to do any good. She doesn't have the slightest idea why you two blew up like that." Zack widened his stance and placed his hands on his hips. "No one knows, and I think you would be doing both of your brothers a favor by _not fucking telling her_."

It took a minute for Zack's words to make it through the wall of anger that faced him, but eventually they registered and Sora and Roxas became limp in their boyfriend's arms, allowing for Riku and Axel to release them, hovering close by on the off chance that the twins decided to make a break for it after all.

"Then what _are _we supposed to do?" Roxas asked angrily, the fires of rage still burning brightly in his crystal blue eyes. "Are we supposed to just go back in there knowing that she may have effectively offered Cloud up to his worst enemy on a silver platter? I don't care what the hell Cloud says, if Sephiroth so much as _looks_ at him, or behind him, or fifty feet off to the side of him, then I am going to hunt him down and make him _beg_ for jail."

"That's not going to help at all." Strangely enough, it was Riku who was the first to head off Roxas' maniacal energy. "Look, I'll be the first one to admit that I would like to cut off my brother's balls and turn them into a nice hood ornament, but that's not how this problem is going to be solved. As much as you two don't want to admit it, it's not your problem. It's Cloud's, and not only do you not have the right to fix it for him, but you also don't have the right to go telling people about it in fits of rage because they said an insensitive comment that meant a lot more than it should have. Now, we are going to have to go back in there, and we are going to deal with what Rinoa has to tell is with some semblance of maturity, and then we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that this month passes without whatever they are planning coming to fruition."

There was a brief silence after his words before Sora sighed heavily and fell back limp against him. "Since when did you start making sense?"

Riku shrugged lightly and wrapped his arms around his now calm boyfriend. "Since everyone else around here decided that they didn't want to."

"Hmmm. That's a good reason." Sora murmured tiredly. "Look, I just want to go back to the dorm and study something that has absolutely nothing to do with my brothers for awhile."

Roxas nodded in the background, his body still tense but his position merely suggesting making a break for it instead of threatening it. "I'm with Sora. You two can go back in there and find out what's going on if you like, but I know that I for one will not be able to stop myself if she says something like that again so it's best if I don't even risk it."

"Are you still going to help us?" Axel asked hesitantly.

Roxas was now back to chewing on his thumbnail. "I guess we don't have much of a choice. We'd be some pretty shitty brothers if we knew that there was someone out trying to harm our siblings and we did nothing about it."

"Yeah, I guess through all the torture and horrible memories, there were times when Leon and Cloud were nice to us and helped us with stuff… And I kind of would like the keep the delusion going that they would protect us were we in their situation." Sora turned around and nuzzled into Riku's shoulder. "I guess we'll still help."

"Roxas, Sora, I know your brothers would help you out if you were in their position." Zack smiled softly. "And, despite my better judgment, I would help you just like I'm trying to help them. In fact, why don't you two have a problem of this magnitude? At least you're easier to work with than trying to stop an oncoming train."

"Story of my life lately." Axel answered whole-heartedly. "God damn it. This bet hasn't been fun for a long time. It needs to just _end_."

"And I suppose you're going to be the one to end it by telling Leon and Cloud and being a good little meat shield for the rest of us, huh?" Riku inquired sarcastically, ignoring Axel's upraised middle finger response. "Let's face it. No matter what we do we're going to come out losing. Even if by some fuckin' miracle Leon and Cloud start a relationship out of this and we get some munny out of the deal, we're still going to lose because they're going to reap their revenge in blood, no matter how happy they may be together."

"Ugh, and I was really starting to _enjoy_ my life." Zack rolled his eyes. "Everyone keeps on refusing to tell them because you're afraid of how they are going to react. I'll tell you how they're going to react. They are going to yell, and then they are probably going to skulk around campus or home or whatever glaring for a bit, and then they are going to be basically over it. Granted they aren't going to be trusting anyone for a few years because none of you would step up and let them know about the spreading of their secrets throughout the student body, but life _will_ go on."

"You say that now, but you aren't going to have to live with them after this is all said and done." Roxas pointed out. "You get to stay here with your lovely wife and hide behind her innate goodness and talent for not garnering enemies and we're going to have to stake it out on the front lines."

"When are you going to have to live with them again?" Zack asked, clearly fully interesting in the answer. "To the best of my knowledge, Leon and Cloud have basically moved out of your mother's house, excepting their old beds, some furniture, and a few sets of clothes they keep there on the off chance they come to visit and wish to spend the night. I would think that once they are free of college, they're going to want to branch out and spend more time at that apartment they have been investing in for the past four years."

"Zack, they never stay at the apartment." Roxas was quick to point out. "You of all people should know that. If it weren't for the fact that I know they horde their privacy with a vicious kind of tenacity, then I would wonder why they even bothered to keep the place."

Zack just nodded sagely and kept his silence, knowing that there wasn't much more he could say to change their minds that wouldn't come dangerously close to betraying his friend's confidence. It really was a bitch being deemed trustworthy enough to keep secrets.

Especially when Cloud and Leon were involved.

* * *

"So what's the story?" Sora asked tiredly from inside the nest he had made on his bed. "And could we please have the Sparknotes version? I'm too tired to do a lot of muddling through the general stupidity of this whole thing."

"Kairi got in touch with Naminé and she agreed to get in touch with Xemnas to offer her help." Axel tossed his bookbag on the floor and took up his previous spot in Riku's computer chair. "She's going to call him tomorrow because the odds of something happening in the hours between one in the morning when Cloud and Leon are likely to get back and their first class at noon are low."

"Uh huh. Anything else we might want to know?" Roxas asked from his side of Sora's bed.

"Only that Rinoa is really, really sorry for all the trouble she's caused and that her, Tifa, and Aerith seem to have made up and agreed to become friends again." Riku flopped down onto his own bed, suddenly very exhausted. "Kairi is understandably skeptical still, but she doesn't seem to out and out _hate_ the girl, so I guess we have to be nice to her unless she does something else remarkably brain-dead."

"It's only a matter of time." Roxas growled out. "How the hell could someone be so stupid as to involve the least mentally stable person in this city and to set him on the trail of the one person he can't have?"

"Considering the fact that Zack is actually right for once and she doesn't _know_ why involving Sephiroth is such a bad idea, I'd say she's not nearly as stupid as everyone keeps saying she is." The computer chair creaked as Axel leant back and began to contemplate the ceiling. "She's only doing the same thing my cousin Reno was trying to do before Sephiroth made an ass of himself in front of the entire school. She's giving someone who used to be a good guy a chance at something that could make him happy. It's not her fault that Cloud doesn't want to share each and every traumatic experience in his life with the world, and I don't see Seph standing up and correcting everyone's viewpoint on the matter either."

"Probably because Cloud would cut his dick off if he tried." Riku flipped over onto his stomach. "And believe me, if Cloud ever announced he wanted to do just that, I'd be the first one in line to help hold that bastard down."

"You'd have to climb over me and Sora first." Roxas grabbed a nearby pillow and clutched it close to his chest. "Strife's get first call at maiming and/or killing Sephiroth if it ever comes down to it."

"Roxas, face it. We're just as much Strifes as you are and Cloud and Leon are just as much our brothers." Riku stared blandly over in the small blonde's direction. "Even if we weren't tied to you by romantic relationships, we'd still be your friends, and Cloud and Leon would still be the older brothers we would want to look up to, but never to live with. Besides, even if you don't want to acknowledge my utter Strife-itude, I'm still Sephiroth's blood brother, which gives me all the rights I need to be first in line when the killing spree begins."

"He's got a point, Rox." Sora spoke up from inside his blanketed homework nest. "We've been trying for years to run them off and they've stuck around… And they're even better brothers to Cloud and Leon than we are sometimes. When was the last time we helped them with a prank or covered their asses?"

"I got tired of picking up after their messes in high school." Roxas frowned. "I know you two wanna-be pranksters worship the ground they walk on, but I really don't see why. They aren't as cool as everyone thinks they are. They're just a little more insane than average."

"And I aspire to one day reach their level of insanity." Axel swiveled the chair around in circles. "I feel like we've been over this before."

"That's because we have… Many times." Riku buried his head deep in his pillow, hoping to sleep through the rest of the day. Maybe he would get lucky and wake to find that this whole fiasco was just a horrible, horrible dream.

Too bad he knew that he was never that lucky.

* * *

"You know, I feel like we're missing something important today by not being at school. Can't say why exactly, but I do." Leon glanced over at where his boyfriend was lounging in the passenger's seat, trying to make himself more comfortable after having spent the last hour and a half driving. "Have you ever gotten a feeling like that before?"

"I dunno. Can't remember a time if I ever did." Leon answered smoothly and turned his eyes back the dark road. "But I'm not surprised. Today would be the perfect day for everyone on campus to gather together and hold open forums on us and our behavior with us not there to be able to stop them or stumble upon something we're not supposed to be knowing."

"Huh. I guess that makes sense." Cloud absentmindedly played with a longish strand in his bangs for a moment. "Well, what does it matter anyways? This will all be over in one month and then we can leave it all behind us once and for all."

"That doesn't mean we can just relax yet." Leon deftly changed lanes to go around a semi before glancing over at his boyfriend once more. "We're in the final innings here. They are going to pull out all the stops in order to get what they want."

"Why a baseball analogy? You don't even like baseball. You think it's boring." Cloud chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip. "But I get what you mean. We're going to have to watch our backs even more than usual."

"This is so fucking annoying. Remind me why we thought this was such a good idea."

Cloud rolled and his eyes and shrugged, resting his head tiredly against the glass. "It _was_ a good idea… Before all the psychos came out of the woodwork and our brothers began inching slowly towards the edge of a mental breakdown."

"Yeah… I guess Mom's not going to be too happy if the twins end up in a mental institution over this, is she?" Leon asked to himself. "But still, it didn't have to be this way. It didn't have to go this far. Are we really to blame for the way things have turned out? Technically we haven't _done_ anything."

"We could have stopped it and we didn't." Cloud pointed out. "That's more than enough reason for us to get all guilty if something bad happens to our little brothers. In fact, I think Mom was saying something about that last week. Maybe we should start listening to her on occasion."

"Ah. I never thought you would be the one to say that, but you're probably right." Leon thought for a second. "Huh. I never thought I'd ever say that you were right about anything either. I guess today is a day for discoveries."

"Bite me, Leon."

"And I totally would, except we'd probably crash and die." Leon shot back and grinned as he could practically sense Cloud's glare. "I don't think Yuffie would appreciate waking up in the emergency room."

"Hey, Yuffs, you got a problem with us careening into a tree?" Cloud shot back over his shoulder and into the backseat.

A deep snore was his only answer.

"I think she's okay with it, Leon."

"Cloud… You're an idiot."

"Don't I know it though?"

* * *

_**A/N: **So I'll leave it up to your imaginations exactly what sort of chaos Cloud, Leon, and Yuffie managed to cause in an amusement park... Also, for some reason I have the image of the three of them in the front seat of a roller coaster singing 'Sexy Back' and using mainly their upper bodies and hands to perform a choreographed dance. But that's just me..._

_Soooooo.... You know what to do.... Click the button and leave your thoughts! I like thoughts. It makes up for nevering having any of my own. Whoo, blank canvas!_


	17. Day TwoHundredFortySix: Fucking Hell

_**A/N: **A double update in which the Intermission is larger than the actual chapter... Wow... Also, it's been a long time since I've updated this and I apologize profusely, but I had to post both of these together. There just wasn't any other way and it took an inordinate amount of time to write out the endings to both of these. I am so sorry, but I hope that this mega-update is more than enough to make up for me going missing for a time...._

_In other news, this will be the last author's note until the epiloge. I want the rest of this to flow together without my chatting to interrupt, so... I'll talk to you again in the epiloge... And expect the last chapter, Graduation, to be up sometime in the next month. I will NOT allow myself to wait so long no matter what._

_I hope you are still out there reading this...._

_**

* * *

**_

Chapter Fourteen:

_**Day Two-Hundred and Forty-Six: It's Go Time!**_

Cloud sighed heavily and tipped his chair back to balance on its back two legs, studying a sheaf of papers in his hand intently. Leon merely watched in bored detachment as his boyfriend sighed once more, tilted forward to thump back down to the ground, and adjusted the glasses that had been slipping down the bridge of his nose while he was been focused on reading.

"Why is this so god damned complicated?" Cloud asked off-handedly as he pulled the pen out from behind his ear and began tapping the end of it on the edge of the metal table. "You'd think they would make something like this easy, but you'd be wrong."

"I can't say I feel too sorry for you considering I somehow managed to finish everything last week." Leon answered as he continued to watch the minimal progress of his roommate as far as the papers were concerned. "I fail to see how you being lazy and playing Halo then constitutes for my pity now."

Cloud shrugged easily as he signed something with a flourish and flipped to a different page. "I was so overjoyed at finishing the last of my finals that I wanted to have nothing to do with writing or reading for at least a week. At least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself. It sounds better than I was lazy and was going for some kind of procrastination award."

"Ah, but you neglect to remember that we all know the truth." Leon pointed out and Cloud sent him an extended middle finger in response. "Well, hurry up. Not only do you have to turn the majority of this in today, but we have to go give up our dorm keys before we can go home. I don't think I need to remind you that today is not the day to be hanging around campus, not with graduation tomorrow and everyone we know becoming desperate beasts."

Cloud nodded slowly, more focused on his paperwork than on the world around him. Adjusting his glasses once more he checked off a series of answers and looked up at where Leon was still staring at him. "You know, trying to make me uncomfortable is not conducive to quick paperwork."

"And you know that I don't fucking care. You should be used to it." Leon shot back quickly. Cloud rolled his eyes, adjusted his glasses once more and dove back into the thick stack with much more gusto than he was really feeling.

Now it was Leon's turn to sigh. Leave it Cloud to keep every last difficult task for the very last second and to have really and truly forgotten about it until the only place they had to sit for at least an hour was out in the very open North Quad, a place they should have steered clear of if they wanted to continue on their day hassle free. To say that Leon was a bit on edge was putting it mildly, and it seemed as though Cloud couldn't be made to care… Not that he ever did. It still would have been nice if he could have at _pretended_ for once.

"Cloud! Leon!" Leon winced as he heard the unmistakable strains of his younger brother's voice carry across the open and fairly deserted area. Looking up and around he caught sight of the twins waving enthusiastically and dragging their surprisingly somber boyfriends behind them as they made their way over to where the older boys were seated. Sora bounced happily to a stop a few feet away from the table and grinned widely. "Hey, we haven't seen you guys for _days_. Where have you been?"

"Hiding. Now go away." Leon jumped in to answer, hoping that by taking on the responsibility of making and maintaining conversation, he could allow Cloud to continue on with what he was doing with the minimum of distraction.

He should have known better.

"We've been around." Cloud glanced up from his packet and sent the group gathered in front of them a bland look. "Honestly, it's not our jobs to make sure you know where we are at every moment of the day."

"No, but it would be nice if you would at least touch base every once in a while." Roxas muttered darkly as the four boys pulled up chairs and began settling in much to Leon's dismay. "I can't even begin to tell you how fun it is to explain to Mom how we haven't seen you in days, and no, we _don't_ know if you've been thrown in jail or not, but I guess we'll ask around."

"Welcome to the responsibility of having brothers." Cloud offered up sarcastically as he folded his packet and slipped it into the bag at his feet. Leon groaned, but made no move to stop him, already knowing that to do so would be pointless. "And you can just shut the hell up. I've only got like two pages left to read anyways. I can do that just as easily in the office as I can out here."

"So why don't we go do that in the office right now?" Leon inquired hopefully, finally beginning to guess at something he had basically known all along. Something _was_ going to happen. Something was going to happen and Cloud knew that it was, and probably even knew what it was, and it didn't look like he was going to be sharing his knowledge any time soon.

"Because I haven't seen my baby brothers in a week and I occasionally enjoy talking to them. I know… Shock and awe, but there's not a damn thing you can do about it." Cloud huffed haughtily and turned towards his younger siblings, intent on ignoring his grouchy and tense roommate in favor of conversation in which he was less likely to be seriously ridiculed. "So how have your lives been on this, the wonderful last week of school?"

Sora shrugged. "Okay I guess. We've been having to hide ourselves for the most part. You two apparently have a lot of friends that would like to say goodbye to you and none of them have known where you were."

"Well, with finals over and no real reason to be here other than to tie up loose ends, we've been living in the apartment." Cloud sank deeper into his chair. "I don't know why Mom wouldn't have told you about that, though. It's not like it was some kind of national secret."

Now it was Roxas' time to shrug. "Who knows why Mom does the things she does? But, speaking of the apartment, Mom's going away in a few weeks for work and Axel's being dragged along on his family's annual vacation, so I was wondering if I could crash at your place instead of being left alone in the house."

"I don't see why not. We've got an extra bedroom." Cloud answered easily.

"I thought you had a two bedroom apartment." Axel spoke up for the first time since being dragged out of his room by a hysterical set of twins thirty minutes previous in the hopes that hovering around Cloud and Leon would be enough to thwart whatever it was that Xemnas and his crew had been planning.

"And when was the last time any of you have bothered to come visit us when we were there?" Leon shot back, figuring that he might as well give in and stop being anti-social in the hopes that moving the conversation along would make it end more quickly. "For all you know, we've bought out our entire floor and have proceeded to form some kind of cheap hotel for income purposes."

"Considering your mom would have had something to say about that if that were the case, I highly doubt it." Axel muttered darkly, not in the mood for dealing with Leon's sarcasm. Not that he was ever in the mood. He was just especially not in the mood today.

"Considering I would think that you wouldn't want your face bashed in, I would think you would want to be shutting up right about now." Leon mocked back, echoing the young man's bad mood and intensifying it. "What are you still doing here anyways? Your last finals were before ours. Shouldn't you have all moved back home where you can bother Mom and not us?"

"And we so would but Roxas' truck has had its check engine light on for about a week now and you know how your mom is about driving potentially unsafe vehicles." Riku flicked at the ends of his bangs, bored out of his mind. "It's been in the parking lot taking up space and being generally useless ever since. In case you haven't noticed, none of us have jobs at the moment and calling a tow truck costs munny that a job would provide."

"Really? Are you all oblivious idiots?" Cloud asked seriously and the four younger boys turned to look at him in surprise. "Now let's think this through for a second. Who do you know that has been taking auto mechanics classes since he was a freshman in high school? Also, who do you know that has a motorcycle sitting in a garage that he has built from the ground up?"

"Uh… I'm going to go with you." Roxas answered sheepishly, already seeing where this was going and mentally cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner. Sure, Cloud wouldn't do it for free, but he would be more lenient when it came to bill collecting than an established business. But still, there was something nagging at the back of his mind that was telling him there _was_ a reason he hadn't wanted to tell Cloud about his truck troubles, but for the life of him he couldn't think of what that reason could have been.

"So do you want me to look at it?" Cloud rested his chin gently on his hand and looked his brother over curiously. "I mean, we've come to the conclusion that I know what I'm doing and that I have time to spare. I think it would only make sense if you would kindly point me in the direction of your distressed vehicle, but I am known to be wrong from time to time. Granted, it doesn't happen often."

"You are full of shit as always." Leon rolled his eyes in disgust. "You are very often wrong. In fact, you were wrong just two seconds ago. You do _not_ have time to be wasting looking at Roxas' truck. You have paperwork to finish and turn in and we need to go turn our dorm keys into the housing office before they close unless you enjoy having to pay fines."

"We have _hours_ to do that." Cloud now turned to look at his roommate with a sharp glare. "How long do you think it's really going to take to help out our brother in his time of need? What kind of cruel brother are you?"

"The kind that knows that the possibility of Roxas' truck disappearing within the next hour or so is highly unlikely." Leon answered back tiredly. "Fuck, what the hell am I doing? Of course you're going to put off any responsibilities until the very last second. Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to for a second."

"Well, that's what you get for not paying attention." Cloud rose slowly to his feet. "So, Roxas… The truck is where?"

"Uh… Lot F last time I checked." Roxas exchanged shrugs with his companions. Well, this was one way to make sure that Cloud and Leon stayed occupied and out of the way of anyone who would want to cause them harm, and Roxas might even get his truck fixed in the deal. It seemed like a such a good happenstance that it was mildly suspicious. "I'm sure there's a reason I didn't ask you to look at it before though…. Maybe it's nothing major and I didn't want to waste your time."

"I know you asked Reno to look over it back when the light first came on." Axel reminded his boyfriend as the small group stood and began making their way to the indicated lot. "But I think he got busy and forgot."

Cloud sniffed in disdained and crossed his arms over his chest in proud defiance. "I am five times the mechanic Reno is and I only do it for fun. He does it for a living. I'm almost insulted that you would have thought to go to him before you would come to your own blood. Roxas, I'm ashamed of you."

"Oh god, this is going to turn into a huge pissing contest between the two of you, I know it." Roxas groaned and slapped himself on the forehead. "Just please don't go out of your way to put in hydraulics or something equally unnecessary like you did to Mom's car. I just want the light to go off so Mom won't have a fit about me using it to take our furniture and heavy stuff back home."

"Where's the fun in that?" Cloud did indeed sound mildly disappointed but he sighed and shrugged. "But I guess I won't mess with it for now. Mark my words, though, I will turn your truck into the most pimpin' vehicle this side of the city someday. Just you wait."

"I wait with bated breath I assure you." Roxas offered up sarcastically as he moved up to lead the way, allowing Cloud to drop back to bounce happily next to Leon, who was more interested in glaring at the ground than anything going on around him.

"You know, Leon, if you are really so badly upset about me not finishing my paperwork, you could always look over the last bit for me." Cloud suggested after a moment of contented silence. "That way all I would have to do is sign it and then we could go on our merry ways after I finish with Roxas' truck."

"But then all I would be doing is reinforcing that it's okay for you to be lazy." Leon pointed out grumpily. "It's not okay for you to be lazy. In fact, I'm really tired of having to run in behind you and finish up what you leave behind when you attempt something because you were being lazy. It's a very pressing concern of mine."

"Well, your very pressing concern can just go fuck itself." Cloud slung his backpack around so that it slapped Leon hard in the shoulder. "So… Knowing my opinion and the fact that you want to get out of here as quickly as possible for some reason, I would think that you would like to get the papers out of my bag once we reach the parking lot and finish my work for me."

"You actually _think_? Could have fooled me." Leon inquired as a means of getting the blonde to shut up. It worked, and Cloud offered up one last middle finger salute before quickening his pace back to Roxas' speed in order to badger his younger brother about what the truck had been acting like before the light came on and other mechanical related issues, to which it seemed Roxas did not have any answers.

"Well, he's being awfully friendly and amiable today… for him at least." Riku muttered as Leon fell back enough in the group to be considered on the outskirts, a pace that Riku had been told that he was to protect under pain of death lest either Cloud or Leon decided to try to escape from the twin's attentions before they were safely in their apartment where nothing could go wrong. "I mean, he's still being a dick to _you_ but that's normal."

"Don't I know it, though?" Leon sighed heavily and turned his full attention on the silver-haired youth next to him. At least Riku hadn't been all that talkative thus far. And he really seemed to be impatient to be gone from there if the way he was constantly glancing back and forth between his surroundings and wristwatch. That was something they had in common for once. They both wanted to be as far away from there as humanly possible. "But I suppose I should be used to it by now."

"I should hope so unless you're planning on getting your own place sometime in the not too distant future." Riku once again risked another glance at his watch and, catching Leon's curious stare, actually elaborated without any prodding. "The dorms close out in a few hours and we don't have any of our furniture out of them, mainly because Roxas has been promising for days that his truck was going to be ready in time so we didn't go out looking for another one to borrow. I don't think I want to have my desk taken away never to be seen again when the doors get padlocked at two."

"Was it a particularly special desk?" Leon asked, almost half sarcastically. He was pretty sure that he would have been just as irritated if for some reason Cloud had done something to ensure all his furniture would be taken away forever. It was a weird feeling: empathy. Leon didn't know if he liked it.

Riku shrugged. "Not that I am aware of. It's just the principle of the thing. It's my desk, and I would like to keep it that way because something of mine should never belong to someone else without my permission and the possible exchanging of munny."

"A man after my own heart." Leon nodded sagely. "You should be proud of yourself, for once I have agreed with everything to come out of your mouth. Now, this doesn't happen often, so I'm going to give you a second to bask in your unintentional glory."

And Riku closed his eyes and actually took the proffered second. It really _wasn't_ everyday that Leon admitted to agreeing with someone. Usually he would just take up the other position for the sake of arguing regardless of whether he felt that way or not. It entertained him to be contrary.

"Hey, Leon, will you ever so kindly hold my backpack while I look at the truck so it doesn't get dirty?" It didn't seem like Leon had a choice in the matter, though, as his conversation was interrupted by Cloud's plea and the backpack in question being tossed at his face. "And could you be a dear and read over the last bit of my paperwork for me so we can get out of here?"

"Fuck you, Strife, fuck you." Leon shot his roommate a glare and sighed heavily when it went ignored as Cloud was now deep under the hood of the truck, muttering curses every once in a while when he found something he didn't like with the twins watching over his progress eagerly. "Of course he didn't hear me. He never hears me, or, if he does by some miracle hear what I have to say, he doesn't listen to me. I don't even see why I bother."

"Because there are rare moments when he actually does listen to what you say and becomes a better person because of it?" Riku ventured hesitantly. Leon snorted in disbelief. "Meh, it was worth a try."

"More like he likes to hear himself talk." Axel muttered sarcastically. He then proceeded to match Leon's glare with his own fairly decent one. "What? Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're awfully testy today." Riku whispered after Leon flipped the red-head off and there was a moment in which it looked like he was going to lash out as well. Riku looked over nervously to find that Leon was now occupied with rifling through Cloud's backpack in search of the unfinished paperwork and not paying them the slightest bit of attention. "You know, just because he acknowledges that you might just be worth the air you breathe, doesn't mean that you are the bestest of buddies and he's never going to knock your teeth out for anything ever again."

"You know, I half hope he does punch me in the face today. And I hope there is campus security around to witness the event and haul him away." Axel ran a hand through his more tangled than usual tresses. "I'd like to see someone try and fuck with him in the holding tank without getting arrested themselves."

"You know, I honestly don't think it's Leon that we're going to have to worry about them fucking with." Riku admitted. "As scary as he is and as much damage as we all know he's capable of causing, and as easy of a target as he seems to be because of his intense protectiveness, I really think it's going to be Cloud they are going to target. Cloud in a full blown rage is something I have only seen once, and it is something I don't ever want to witness again. It'll be harder for them to accomplish, but it'll suit their goals more than just pissing Leon off. Leon will forgive… Cloud, Cloud holds grudges."

"So what?" Axel shrugged. "Why would they care about that?"

"Think about it… If they are so dead set on breaking them up, do you really think they're just going to stop at separating them for a few days?" Riku asked sharply. "This has gone so much further than just not letting them get together until the bet expires. This is about a group of people out to ruin their _lives_ just because of some petty grudge or because they're bored and this sounds like an entertaining enough thing to do today."

Axel pondered this for a moment and sighed tiredly. "Fuck, you're probably right, but I really don't see how hovering over them is going to help matters. In fact, all we're doing is drawing more attention to them by moving around in a large group. Apparently they were doing fine staying out of the way on their own for a few hours before we came along."

Riku merely shrugged and watched on in detached interest as Leon began skimming the sheaf of papers he had been looking for, his face an almost unreadable mask except for the high levels of irritation that he couldn't stop from showing up. Apparently whatever Cloud had left him to handle was not to his liking, but there was nothing new in that. The silver haired youth bit back the urge to bury his face in his hands and ignore the world for the time being. Axel was right, this was a bad idea. Leon and Cloud had been doing fine all on their own without their brothers' interference. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that inconspicuous was better today, so why hadn't they thought about that when they had begun their mad search for Sora and Roxas' missing brothers?

Because they were idiots, Riku thought to himself. There was nothing about this that was under control anymore and attempting to grab the reins now was nothing more than an empty gesture. The time for stepping up and taking charge was long past and now there was nothing left to do but wait and see what the future held and hope that everything turned out okay in the end. It was a shitty plan, but it was just about the only thing left to do other than straight up panic, and Riku didn't think he could handle another panic episode without going insane himself.

And so the two friends settled in to wait, the fluttering of nervous butterflies in their stomachs the only thing to keep them company as they watched over the two men they loved and the two men they had come to love as brothers knowing that there was nothing they could do to help.

And it was the helplessness that was the worst feeling of all.

* * *

"So would you like to tell me the truth about why your truck is virtually in pieces on the inside, or are you going to continue to pretend you don't have a clue as to how it got that way?" Cloud asked in a bored tone of voice as he studied his nails. The whole walk back from the parking lot to the Quad had been filled with angry questions and Roxas' nervous avoidance, and now it seemed as though Cloud was done playing around. "I only ask because if you really and truly don't understand how it came to be missing half of its fucking harmonic balancer, then I don't think I can understand exactly how to fix it."

"Why are you tormenting me?" Roxas groaned as he rested his head in his arms. "Isn't it enough that I don't _want_ to tell you? I already said I'd pay for the parts and your time. The reasoning behind it all isn't really all that important when the end result is that you're going to get paid whether you know how it happened or not."

"Roxas…" Cloud sighed heavily. "I'm not going to charge you to fix your truck, and I can get you parts so cheap that it'd be in poor taste for me to ask you to pay for them. I just want to know because if you are missing your entire serpentine belt, then someone was digging around in there. Either you allowed this to happen, or you are covering for whoever took the parts in the first place… Or maybe you really don't know and you're trying to hide that you've been part jacked because you don't want Mom to worry about you. Look, I won't even tell Mom, _and_, to sweeten the deal, I'll even make some calls and see if I can't get a truck out here today that you can borrow to get the rest of your stuff home."

Four of the gathered boys looked at him with unrestrained shock and surprise. In fact, the twins were so surprised the almost forgot to breathe for a second… An issue that was quickly remedied when their bodies violently reminded them that oxygen was more than just appreciated; it was demanded and if they didn't go about getting it for themselves then their bodies were going to have to do what they needed to do to get it with or without permission.

"Cloud… You don't have to do that…" With the return of breathing came the return of speech and if Roxas sounded a bit like he was going to cry, he was to be forgiven. It wasn't every day that Cloud went out of his way to do something when he didn't have to and when he hadn't been treated very kindly by the person he was attempting to help lately.

"No, I don't, but I'm going to." The blonde shrugged. "You're my brother and I'm supposed to take care of you when it comes to the important things, and this I think qualifies as important. You need a vehicle so you can do your internship this summer. I'm not just going to sit here and watch you lose out on a good opportunity because you allowed someone to tinker around in your engine… I am assuming that's what happened…"

"Yeah…" Roxas ran a hand through his messy spikes. "Naminé has a friend that thinks he might want to take some auto tech classes and he wanted to look under my hood to see if he liked it or whatever… Needless to say, he apparently has made off with several very important pieces of machinery."

"See, that's all you had to say." Cloud smiled gently and then turned to where his roommate was sullenly contemplating the ground as he had been for the past half hour. "So, Leon, I think it's about damn time we headed to the office and settled our issues here once and for all so we can finally move on."

The brunette offered up a glare that would have burned the skin off of Cloud's bones had that been physically possible, but stood up and strode off in the general direction of the main office anyways. The other boys watched them go helplessly, rightfully realizing that following would only end badly for them, but feeling the urge to go in any case. In fact, there was no more curiosity than protectiveness. Something was bothering Leon and, if the way he had immediately turned to shoot some form of accusation at his roommate the second they were out of hearing range was any indication, it was something that could very likely not help as far as protecting their relationship was concerned.

If Leon was already mad at Cloud, then it would be nothing more than a slight nudge that could be used to push them apart for good and that was a thought that settled uncomfortably in the stomachs of the four boys who were now determined to make sure that the older two were protected as best as they could be.

Today was going to be a bitch and there wasn't a damn thing they could do to stop it.

* * *

"Remind me again why you thought giving a stranger the opportunity to spend intimate time alone with your truck was a good idea?" Zack asked curiously as he trailed after the twins and their boyfriends as they made their way to the first dorm they would have to move furniture out of. "Also remind me why you didn't think it was a good idea to call Cloud up the minute you realized something was wrong instead of waiting until the last minute. I tend to forget these things, you know."

"And remind me again why you seem to be the only person on the planet with a working truck?" Roxas shot back snippily. He was not in a good mood as it was and Zack's constant chatter and irritating questions were not helping his outlook on life any.

"Ah, that's where you're wrong, _Aerith _is the only person on Earth with a truck who wouldn't think to ask questions until much later." Zack smirked happily. "Unluckily for you, she has to work all day and I don't. Unlike my lovely wife, I _do _feel the urge to know the situation behind my helping people out and your older brother was more than happy to oblige my sense of curiosity. I'm sure it was just as entertaining for him as it was for me."

"Leave it to Cloud to be nothing more than an annoying older brother even when caught in the throes of actually doing something nice." Roxas grumbled under his breath. "Is it really too much to ask that he not get some form of cheap thrill out of being a decent human being?"

"Yes, yes it is." Sora cut in from the background. "But who fucking cares? We now have a truck no thanks to you and your car is getting fixed free of charge because our brother loves us. What the hell else do you want? Sunshine and rainbows and for Cloud to give you a hug?"

"Fuck no." Roxas shot back. "I don't even know what I fucking want from them anymore. All I know is that we have much better things to be doing than moving piles of our junk off campus."

"Have either of you taken a second to stop and think that Leon and Cloud can fight their battles on their own without any of you to be there to help out?" Zack asked absentmindedly. "I know it's shocking to think about sometimes, but your older brothers have been living on their own two feet for quite a bit longer than you two seem to think and they are going to continue to do so for the foreseeable future."

"That doesn't mean the guilty duo over here doesn't think they have to do everything and anything in their power to make sure that neither Cloud nor Leon's feelings get hurt." Axel offered up from his position off to the side of the group. "And on that count I think we can all agree. Just because we don't _have_ to help doesn't mean we don't want to."

"But what if there is nothing you can do?" Zack pressed, fully intent on hearing the answer. "What if you can only stand on the sidelines and watch as they fight their own battles without you despite your best intentions?"

"Look, Cloud and Leon have sacrificed more for us than anyone but them know, and it's more than time for us to take our heads out of our asses and do something to make sure that _they_ get the chance to be happy." Roxas spoke up and his twin nodded behind him. "I know there had been times when they've done things for us without asking us if we needed it or without telling a soul. They're our brothers, so I don't really expecting them to stop chasing us around the house for stealing their GameCube controller or whatever, but I would like to think that when it counts we can be there for them the way they have always been there for us, whether they like it or not."

"And you will be… Just not on this." Zack answered without hesitation. "Why can't everyone see that it doesn't matter what happens today? Cloud and Leon have already had their feelings hurt multiple times over the course of the school year, and, on top of that, they are about to get their feelings hurt again in a way that's going to leave no questions as to their personal lives and private things they don't want anyone to know about."

"And here's the kicker… There isn't a damn thing you can do about it."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Roxas growled out. "Of course there is something we can do. We can make damn sure that nobody who would want to hurt them gets within five miles of them today."

"Have you ever thought that might not be what they would want…?"

But before he could go on and before Roxas or Sora could interrupt angrily, they were stopped in their tracks by Rikku running up behind them and slamming into Axel, sending them both sprawling on the ground.

"Shit!" Both injured parties screamed the expletive at the same time while the other boys rushed to help them both to their feet with Axel rubbing his head and Rikku massaging her elbow.

"Fuck, watch where you're going will you?" Axel muttered as he began to take stock of his body to be sure that he wasn't too terribly hurt. Other than the headache he'd had since that morning he seemed to be fine, though his recent brush with concrete certainly hadn't helped his pre-existing condition.

If Rikku was put out by Axel yelling at her, she didn't show it. In fact, she just looked at them as though they'd lost their minds. "What are you doing all the way over here!?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Sora asked grumpily. "We're moving our stuff out of our dorms just like everyone else."

"Fuck! You haven't heard." The young girl flipped her long, blonde mane over her shoulder and grabbed the nearest boy to her (who happened to be Riku) and started pulling. "Cloud and Leon were ambushed by Sephiroth and Seifer in the West Quad! The whole fucking school is over there right now. It's a massive brawl!"

And at that point there was no need to for Rikku to pull anyone because they had left her in their dust.

* * *

By the time they had reached the quad in question, most of the multiple brawls had quieted down and there was now a ring of students forming a wall around the middle of the most open area, blocking it from the view of those trying to get in on the outskirts. The five young men who had just sprinted across most of the campus rushed into the crowd with their elbows up ready to push and shove their way to the front only to find that the crowd was more than willing to part in order to let them through.

Confused, the boys slowed down as they continued to be allowed to pass easily and without question. If it weren't for the fact that most of those gathered had torn clothing and cut lips, they would have doubted there had been a large fight at all, but it wasn't until they got closer to the inner ring that they realized exactly why no one was fighting anymore:

Because there was something much more interesting than beating the shit out of each other in the middle.

And that something was Sephiroth and Cloud beating the shit out of each other.

Or, more accurately… Cloud beating the shit out of Sephiroth who was too busy laughing maniacally to care about the fact that blood was pouring out of his nose or that Cloud had just landed a decent blow on his shoulder which made a loud cracking sound under the weight of the blonde's fist.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Cloud yelled and the crowd flinched away from him instinctively. Not many people'd had the dubious pleasure of seeing Cloud in a towering rage, but it didn't take a genius to know that the way he was glaring daggers at the man across from him was not a good thing. "I _damn sure_ know I told you to stay the fuck away from me."

"And I damn sure don't care." Sephiroth mocked as he gathered himself together and allowed the last of his frenzied chuckles to subside. "You have never been in a position to tell me what I can cannot do, and so I will continue to do whatever I damn well please whether you like it or not."

There was a small commotion from the other end of the circle of students and all eyes were drawn away from the pair now warily circling each other to see Leon desperately attempting to break away from the hold (and the tape that had been slapped over his mouth) of Seifer, Xaldin, and Larxene. The students in that corner seemed to be torn between wanting to help the poor man and being terrified by the psychotic looks Larxene was throwing at them every time someone wandered a bit too close.

"Oh fucking hell." Zack muttered under his breath. "I fucking _knew_ something like this was going to happen. God damn it, Cloud."

He then turned to the four boys cursing and fuming next to him as they tried to push through the much tighter inner ring of students only to find that they apparently were not about to let anyone break ranks and shatter the tableau in the middle and quickly grabbed their attentions.

"Look, Cloud's on his own for now. There's no way we're going to be able to make it through to him with these idiots in the way." Riku and Axel nodded while Sora and Roxas crossed their arms over their chests and glared.

"Well, there's got to be _something_ we can fucking do!" Roxas' voice was raised to a pitch far past hysterical and Sora instinctively reached out to take his brother's hand while Axel placed a calming hand on his boyfriend's shoulder. "I am not going to just sit here with everybody else while Sephiroth destroys my brother's life for the second fucking time."

"And you won't, but there are other things we have to do first. Cloud's been holding his own up to this point, I'm sure he can hold out for a bit longer." Zack sighed heavily and took a second to attempt to get his mind to slow down to a more regular pace. "Okay, first things first… We have to find a way to get Leon free."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Riku asked seriously. "There's no telling how many people in this crowd are here for the sole purpose of making sure whatever it is that Xemnas and Sephiroth have cooked up goes off without a hitch. We could be walking into a trap if we go over there."

"_You_ won't be walking into a trap. You four aren't even supposed to be here today." At the looks of confusion he was being given, Zack elaborated. "You were supposed to have moved out and back into your mother's house yesterday with the rest of the school, and as far as anyone knows, you did. However, you couldn't move because Roxas' truck is still out of commission… Due to a friend of Naminé's…"

"Wait a fucking second!" Axel cut in. "You can't be seriously trying to say that Naminé sent her friend over to fuck up Roxas' truck on purpose just so that we would be on campus today when we weren't supposed to be? You are so fucking full of shit."

"No, he's not…" It was Riku to speak up this time. "Naminé sent me to mess with Roxas' truck because she knew there was going to be something happening here today. She didn't want us to be at home where we could be easily waylaid or distracted. She wanted us to be right here so that we could help out however we could."

Sora's head snapped over to look at his boyfriend. "You mean you _knew_ about this and you didn't tell any of us!?"

"I wasn't supposed to know!" Riku yelled back, ignoring the strange looks from the students closest to them due to their impromptu argument. "I accidentally ran into Naminé on her way back from one of Xemnas' stupid, fucking meetings and she was upset. I bought her an ice cream and talked to her. I volunteered to fuck up the truck because she was in tears about not knowing how to make sure we could be here today to help without jeopardizing her role as a double agent. Now can we all shut the hell up about who did or didn't do shit and go help Leon before it's too late?!"

And that was all that needed to be said as the boys went to sneaking through the crowd on their way to free the captured Leon, each one trying to keep an ear on the yelling match that was now going on inside of the circle as well.

"Why can't you see that you belong to me?" Sephiroth had been the one to throw out the first verbal gauntlet as they both circled each other with the entirety of the student body behind them trying to keep as still and quiet they as could so as to be able to hear everything that was being said. "If you would just stop this silly resistance and give in the way I know you want to life would be a lot easier for the both of us."

"There has never been anything between us to resist." Cloud shot back angrily, a snarl catching in the back of his throat as he watched his roommate struggling in his peripheral vision. "I don't understand why you won't let this whole thing fucking drop, but I do know that I am never, _ever_ going back to you."

A surprised murmur went through the crowd at that and Sephiroth grinned in acknowledgment of their confusion. "Oh, so I see you never bothered to tell anyone about us. Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"It's not like you fucking said anything either." Cloud backed up a step almost as though he was considering backing down and attempting to run, but suddenly he stood up a bit taller and made up for the ground he'd just lost and then some. "I wonder why you never said anything. Care to tell everyone now, or are you still afraid of what's going to happen when they find out that you're nothing but a filthy psychopath who belongs in jail?"

To Sephiroth's credit, he didn't even flinch, but that might have had more to do with the fact that he was so far gone mentally that things weren't processing the way they should. In fact, only the slight downward twist of his lips showed that he was concerned at all about what Cloud was alluding to.

But if there was something he wanted to say about it, it was lost to the sands of time as there was a sudden outcry from the corner where Leon was now no longer being held, but was busy helping his brothers and their boyfriends beat the shit out of the people who had been doing the holding.

"Fucking hell." Cloud groaned as he caught sight of the commotion that had caught his opponent's attention. "Will you idiots shut the fuck up for five seconds!"

And that was all it took for those involved in the small skirmish to freeze, each one in the midst of punching, kicking, biting, or pulling the hair of someone else.

"Thank you. Christ, we're over here trying to have a proper screaming match and you're trying to interrupt." Cloud rubbed a hand over his forehead and turned away from his relatives and back to the sneering man in front of him. "Now… You were saying?"

"What the fuck are you doing, Cloud?" It was the newly freed Leon's turn to yell. "Let's just get the fuck out of here before they jump us again. We don't have to play their stupid games."

"No, we don't, but they're going to try and make us do it anyways, so why not?" Cloud shrugged as his roommate glared angrily at him. "Besides, I am so fucking _tired_ of this asshole following me. I'm done being his friend. I'm done talking to him. I am done fucking _looking_ at him. I'm just fucking done, and now's as good a time as any to just fucking quit this shit once and for all."

"Good, Cloud." Sephiroth seemed more smug than he really should have been considering Cloud now had reliable back up behind him. "You're right. Let's finish this once and for all. Only… It would be a lot easier if you would save us both the trouble of fighting and give in now."

"See, there you go assuming I'm going to give in to you." Cloud waved his hand through the air in annoyance. "How many times do I have to say that I don't want to be with you before it makes it through your thick skull? Or maybe this is something that you aren't planning to give me a choice in. Fuck, it wouldn't be the first time."

"You had a choice, you just chose the wrong one." Sephiroth answered smoothly. "What were you so afraid of, Cloud? Were you worried that I would lose interest after we took that last step? Were you scared that I would give up on you once you'd given it all up and move on to someone else?" He sent a particularly malicious look in Leon's general direction at that. "Well, I can see how you might think that…"

"Fuck you, Seph." Cloud ground out through clenched teeth. "This isn't about anyone but you and me, and I wasn't fucking afraid of any of that. You just push and push and take and take, don't you? You just won't stop until you're the one on top and you don't bother to think about all those people you've crushed on your way up there once you do manage to see the top. I left you because I knew anything I could ever give you wouldn't be enough. You would just keep pushing and keep taking until there was nothing left for me to give and then you would just keep me, like I was nothing more than another fucking trophy. Well, fuck that."

Sephiroth laughed once more. "You're damn right I was going to take from you, and I'm still going to take from you whether you want me to or not. You can't escape me, Cloud. You had the perfect opportunity to do it back then, but you just didn't have the balls to open your mouth. Which reminds me, that is definitely something we are going to have to fix soon. You are stubborn, but even the most obstinate eventually give in."

"You're fucking right." Cloud said, more to himself than anyone else, but there was a sudden silence at his words and even Sephiroth visibly perked up and leaned in closer in order to better hear what Cloud was about to say. "You know what? You are one hundred percent fucking right. I didn't have the guts to say anything back then, and now look where it's gotten me. I'm fucking fighting with my ex-best friend in front of the whole damn school."

"Cloud!" Leon was now being held back once again, but this time his younger brothers were helping to do the holding. There was no mistaking the rage in his eyes. If he were to be let go, Sephiroth was not going to be walking away from the confrontation. "You don't have to do this. Just shut the fuck up and let's _go_!"

"So you finally told him." Sephiroth raised his hand up to his face and began to study his nails. "Is that why you don't care about what everyone else thinks now? Because he's already rejected you? I mean, really, Cloud, it's nothing to be ashamed of. You should have done this a long time ago and then maybe none of this would have even happened. Maybe we both would be happy."

"Wow. Way to once again make everything about you." Cloud shook his head sadly. "See, this is why we never would have worked out. You don't think about anything past what you want. You don't care about anyone but yourself."

"You seemed perfectly happy to do nothing more than scream my name back then." Sephiroth smiled victoriously, thinking that he had finally won. Leon let out a strangled squeak in the background and the silver-haired maniac turned his attention to him. "What? It's the truth. Does it hurt to hear that? Does it hurt to know that your precious _brother_ was nothing more than my little whore?"

"He was not!" Leon screeched as Roxas and Sora tightened their hold on him. As much as they would have loved to turn the older man loose so that Sephiroth could finally get the beating he deserved, they didn't think that visiting Leon in jail while he was serving time for murder was going to be quite as fun, and murder was what was going to happen if they managed to let the enraged brunette to slip through them. "You fucking _liar_! I swear to fucking god that I am going to fucking _kill_ you!"

"Shut up!" Cloud screamed at the top of his lungs. "Fuck, I'm not going to tell you again. Just shut the fuck up, okay?"

Now the blonde was glaring at Leon and the brunette stopped struggling in confusion.

"God damn it." Cloud ran a hand through his hair. "You don't know anything about this. What Sephiroth did was wrong, but that doesn't give you the right to come out with your fists up to fix my fucking problems for me. Yeah, he raped me…" Here the crowd gasped and a few of the females even fainted. "What? Did you not think he was capable of it? And, yes, I should have said something back then. I should have had his ass thrown in jail, but I didn't, and that's something that I have to live with every day… On my own with no fucking help."

"I am so sick and fucking tired of you trying to fight my battles for me." Cloud had now seemed to tune out everything but the brunette in front of him as the crowd twittered and Sephiroth tried to sneak away. Even he knew when a fight was not going to go his way and he didn't think that it would be a good idea to stand in the middle of a mob after being outed as a rapist. "You never stop to ask me whether I want you to know what's bothering me, you just charge right in and try to do everything your way. Well, your way sucks and I'm fucking tired of it. I'm a big boy. I can do whatever the hell I want on my own without your interference."

Leon easily shrugged the stunned Sora and Roxas off of him. They hadn't been prepared for this sudden turn-about, and they let him go. From the way the crowd was dead silent once again, it seemed as though none of them had seen it coming either. They had come to see a fight between Cloud and Sephiroth… Not Cloud and Leon.

"What are you trying to say?" Leon asked hesitantly.

Cloud shrugged. "I guess that I'm over you, too."

The silence stretched on between them as they stared at each other from across the quad. It didn't seem to matter that their friends and acquaintances were staring at them as though they had gone insane. It didn't seem to matter that their little brothers were crying in the background or that Zack had turned his back on them, not wanting to see this scene.

Suddenly nothing mattered anymore.

"You can have the apartment." Cloud was the first one to break the silence. "I didn't really like the location anyways."

"Where will you go?" Leon was working on autopilot, his mind unable to process what was happening to him, it turned to the things that had never let him down before: The facts. Cloud was leaving and that wasn't something he was going to be able to fix, but making sure the blonde had a place to stay _was_ something he could still do.

Cloud rolled his shoulders and stood up a little straighter. "I'll find a place. Don't worry about me for once. Like I said, I'm a big boy. I can do it on my own."

Leon merely nodded to this, his voice betraying him and not allowing him to say all the things he wanted to say.

Another silence reigned, one which Leon was finally able to break as he began to come to terms with what was happening.

"So I guess this is goodbye?"

"Yeah… I guess it is…"


	18. Intermission Take Two

_**Intermission:**_

_**Full Circle**_

"Do I have to go?" Cloud whined from his place in the backseat. "I already told you I don't like being a Boy Scout. All they do is stupid stuff like arts and crafts. It's boring."

"And I told you when you joined that you were going to at least finish out the year." Mrs. Strife sighed as she watched her son cross his arms over his chest and pout at her in the rear view mirror. "Cloud, you can't keep wanting to do things and never finish them, and you're not changing my mind either. We're almost there and I've already gotten a babysitter for the twins. Besides, there are going to be different boys there tonight. You might even have fun."

"Will not." Cloud responded stubbornly. "Those stupid boys think they're better than us, going to their own stupid school that we're not allow to go to. They're nothing but a bunch of jerks."

Mrs. Strife shook her head and chose to ignore her son's complaints for the rest of the drive, telling herself that he didn't mean what he was saying. To a five year old, the thought of not having parents was almost a blessing. All he saw was a group of boys that didn't have to go to the public school he did, and thus they automatically thought they were better than him and their school was obviously much more fun than his or else there would be no reason for him not to be allowed to go. He didn't even know what the word orphan meant, and she had never managed to find the heart to tell him.

Finally, they arrived at the clubhouse that had been loaned to them for the evening and Mrs. Strife watched her son unbuckle himself in the backseat. Turning around she grabbed his chin and made him look her in the eyes.

"Now, you are going to go in there and you are going to be nice. You are not going to call the other boys names and you are not going to have a fit or cause a scene." He glared defiantly back at her and she matched his stare easily with her own. "Cloud, do _not_ go in there and be a brat. If you do I'm going to make sure to sign you up for another year for however long it takes for you to calm down. And you will _not_ be getting out of it."

Her son groaned, but nodded reluctantly and she let him go, watching as he shot out of the van and ran up the steps in an effort to get away from her as fast as he could. Once more sighing heavily, she grabbed her purse and followed him, finding him standing in the entryway when she got there, arms still folded over his chest and surveying the boys already in the room as though he were just looking for the first opportunity to cause trouble in the hopes of being taken home early.

She placed a firm hand on his shoulder to reign him in before he could take off into the crowd of rambunctious boys around them, effectively losing his mother and stopping her from being able to get to him easily at the first sign of bad behavior. Catching sight of the woman in charge of the orphans, Mrs. Strife steered her son over to her, hoping that by involving him in adult conversation, she would eliminate his need to do whatever it was he wanted to do in order to go home.

"Sylvia, I was wondering for a minute there if you were going to make it." Edea seemed relieved to see the other woman. "I can't thank you enough for agreeing to do this. The boys needed to get out of house before they killed each other."

"I'm sorry for being late, but I had some problems getting Cloud out the door. You know how kids can be." Edea nodded solemnly. She'd had a much similar problem in the form of her most rebellious young charge earlier. Both women turned to watch as the boys chattered and played excitedly around them, meeting new friends and getting to better know old ones. "But I think everything seems to be going fine, and there's no need to thank me. There was no reason for us to have two separate troops of boys the same age level when we could have combined forever ago."

"It's a big help having more parents to be able to help with activities." Edea admitted. "Even with my new assistant, there is only so much I can do in one day."

"I hear you." This was the moment Cloud attempted to shrug off his mother's hand and she tightened her grip, rooting him to the spot. "I don't think you've gotten the pleasure of meeting my eldest. Cloud, say hello to Mrs. Kramer."

The blonde child regarded the smiling woman in front of him for a moment and then turned back to his mother. "There, I've met her. Can I _go_ now?"

Edea, thinking the boy meant that he wanted to play with his friends instead of having to listen to the adults nodded for Mrs. Strife. "I don't see why not. I'm sure your friends have been waiting for you."

Cloud took the window of opportunity granted to him quickly and forcibly shoved his mother's hand away, running away into the crowd as quickly as his little legs would take him before his mother could reclaim him and make him behave.

"Oh dear." Mrs. Strife buried her head in her hands. "This is not going to end well."

"What are you talking about? I think things are going much better than we had expected." Edea placed a gentle hand on her new friend's shoulder and the younger woman looked up slowly.

"Um… I don't know how to say this without making myself look like a bad mother, but Cloud kind of doesn't want to be here." Mrs. Strife admitted. "He got all excited last year when his cousin Zack joined a troop, so I agreed to sign him up this year… Only he found out that arts and crafts are not his forte and he'd much rather stay home and torture his baby brothers than make macaroni art. I haven't let him quit because he _always_ does this when he gets into something and finds out it's not what he wanted it to be, but he tends to be a bit on the dramatic side when he doesn't get his way. Twenty munny says he's over there somewhere thinking of the perfect way to cause a scene so that I'll take him home early and never make him come back."

Edea chuckled lightly. "He's a five year old boy. He's still allowed to have his fits. That doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you a normal one, and I don't see how much trouble he can get into here. I mean, what's the worst he could do?"

And, as if in answer to her question, there was a loud yell from the corner of the room where Cloud and a brunette child Mrs. Strife had never seen before were now rolling around trading punches and screaming at the top of their lungs.

"_That's_ the worst he could do." Mrs. Strife sighed for the fiftieth time that evening as both women and a few of the other parent volunteers rushed over to the scene of the fight in an attempt to pry apart the brawling five year olds.

It took them almost ten minutes, but they finally managed to get the boys separated and in the end it was Edea who grabbed the brunette while Mrs. Strife yanked her own son away and outside where the two boys sat huffing and glaring at each other from around the older women's legs.

"Cloud Edward Strife, _what_ did I tell you about causing problems?" Mrs. Strife was furious, not that Cloud seemed to care. In fact, as he wiped a spot of blood out from under his nose, Mrs. Strife got the distinct impression that he was more intent on trying to glare the little boy across from him out of existence.

A little boy who was also glaring right back while he was being scolded by his own guardian. "Leon, I swear I don't know what to do with you. This is the eighth fight you've picked this week. I give up. I don't know what you want from me, but you have to stop this. Punching is not the way to solve your problems."

The brunette sniffed and stood up gingerly as Cloud did the same, both boys still seemingly ignoring the women in charge of them.

"You tripped me." Cloud accused angrily and Leon shrugged.

"Yeah, you were in my way. What of it?" Leon took a step forward and Cloud did the same, Mrs. Strife and Edea hovering nearby in case more punches were to be thrown. Both women now understood that they were going to be ignored until the boys could talk to each other. Of course, this didn't mean they weren't going to be punished. It just meant they were going to be punished later rather than sooner.

"You're a bully." Cloud stated firmly and Leon nodded. They stood toe to toe for a second looking each other over before each one broke out into a wide grin. "Cool."

"You wanna play with my truck?" Leon asked happily, all previous thoughts of hurting the other boy long gone.

"Sure." Cloud bounced a little bit on the balls of his feet. "You wanna see my new action figure? I just got it last week and it's still shiny and everything. It's Spiderman!"

"Cool!"

And with that they both walked right back into the clubhouse as though nothing had happened and then proceeded to become inseparable for the rest of the evening while their guardians watched on in mild shock and awe, not knowing whether they should be angry or not.

In the end, when the glue began to fly and the boys had to be dragged away to different corners so they would stop picking on the other children instead of each other and Cloud was begging to stay and Leon (who had been the child Edea'd had the most trouble getting to agree to come along) was grabbing onto anything stationary so as not to be pulled away from his new friend that the women knew the meeting had been a success.

They just could have done without the glue throwing…

* * *

"Cloud!" Leon stood on his tiptoes and waved as Cloud stumbled out of his mother's van in order to get his friend's attention. The blonde grinned and sprinted over to his friend's side. "I thought you weren't going to make it."

"Sora and Roxas got sick last night and Mom took forever getting them into the car." Cloud rolled his eyes at the inconvenience of little brothers. Both boys turned to look down the empty street, waiting expectantly in the hopes of seeing the bright yellow school bus that was coming to take them away to Leon's first day in the public school system. It had taken a lot of begging and pleading from both parties, but eventually Edea and Mrs. Strife had been convinced that Leon _needed_ to go to school with Cloud, and that, since Edea wouldn't leave the orphanage to take him there, Mrs. Strife would drop her son off at the bus stop on her way to taking her youngest to kindergarten so they could ride together.

"Gross. Are you gonna get sick?" Leon asked, running off his experiences at the orphanage where when one kid got sick, everyone did.

Cloud wrinkled his nose in disgust. "I hope not. I hate being sick."

"_Everyone_ hates being sick." Leon quipped, and they undoubtedly would have begun to argue had Cloud not known that Leon was trying to pick a fight because he was nervous and not because he really wanted to. There was a brief silence and then… "What's public school like?"

"Boring." Cloud shrugged. He was pretty much over school in any of its forms after having snuck into the orphanage one day to find that Leon's school really was just like his and that he'd been stupid all those years ago to be jealous. And then they'd thrown paint on the kids a year younger than them and Cloud suddenly had to go home. "It's just like your school but with more kids."

"Oh…" Leon seemed to ponder this for a second. "So we're still gonna get homework, huh?"

"Yeah, but we can do it together if you want." Leon looked at his friend in surprise. "We're gonna have most of the same teachers, and pretty much everyone gives the same work anyways. It's not as hard as everyone makes it seem to be either."

Leon nodded his head slowly. "We're still gonna be friends, right? Even if we don't get the same teachers or have the same homework?"

"Duh." Cloud rolled his eyes. "It's gonna take a lot more than some stupid teachers to make me stop being your friend. Besides, you're the only kid I can punch without you crying to some adult about it. No one else is that fun."

Leon grinned and bumped his shoulder lightly against his friend's. "Yeah, I guess so…."

"Here." Cloud held out his hand and Leon watched him curiously. "Let's make a promise. I promise that I'm always going to be your friend no matter what. Now you promise and we shake on it. It's what all the adults do on TV."

Leon smiled slightly at that and took the proffered hand, giving it a gentle shake before saying. "Okay… Then I promise to always be your friend, no matter what."

"Good."

There might have been more they wanted to say, but they were interrupted by the loud rumble of the bus approaching from down the street. It really was nothing more than the first day of school, and not even their _first_ first day of school at that, but as they exchanged reassuring looks before the bus came to screeching halt in front of their stop, they knew that it was a little bit more than that.

They just couldn't quite put their fingers on what it was.

"Hey, Mom…" Mrs. Strife looked up from her book as her eleven year old son put his homework aside to look at her. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course, sweetheart." She smiled warmly at him and gave him her full attention. "But I'm going to tell you right now that if you need help with your math, you might just be out of luck."

Cloud smirked in an expression that spoke of the confident young man he was sure to become. "Why would I ask you to help me with my math when I've got Leon to do it for me?"

"Cloud…" Mrs. Strife sighed heavily. She'd had this conversation about not getting other people to do his homework many, many times in the past. In fact, she'd had this conversation with Cloud's partner in crime, Leon, as well, but there wasn't much she could do about it if neither one of them were going to listen to her. "You know what, let Leon do your homework, and when there comes a day when you two are put in separate math classes and you can't pass your tests anymore don't come crying to me."

Cloud made a noncommittal noise that had her holding back another sigh before crossing his arms over his chest and looking at her seriously. "Actually… It's kind of Leon that I wanted to talk about, though."

"Don't tell me you two had another fight." Mrs. Strife rolled her eyes. "You fight at least once a week and you swear you'll never be friends again… You can't seriously think Edea and I are still falling for that…"

"Meh… We gave up on that last week. It was boring fighting with each other anyway. I always knew what he was going to say. No fun." Cloud admitted. "But that's not what I wanted to ask you."

Mrs. Strife looked as her son in confusion. It was very much like him to beat around the bush and draw everything out for as long as he could, especially if he was trying to get out of doing his school work, but there was something different about him this time. He seemed almost serious for once.

"Mom, what do you have to do to adopt someone?"

There was a small silence in which Mrs. Strife was desperately trying not to let the stunned tear that had formed in the corner of her eye fall before she was capable of answering.

"Well, there is a lot of paperwork you have to fill out and some people would come to your house to make sure that you could take care of whoever it was that you wanted to adopt…. Cloud, honey, I know what you're going to ask and I've thought about it many, many times myself, but there just isn't any way I can adopt Leon… I'm sorry…"

Cloud frowned in confusion. "I don't want you to adopt Leon. What are you talking about?"

"Then why…" Mrs. Strife managed to get out around her surprise. Taking a deep breath she looked at where her eldest was now sending her the best glare an eleven year old could muster. "Cloud, what do you want?"

"Well, Leon and I talked about it, and we know that Edea said you probably wouldn't be able to adopt him, but she never said _I_ couldn't." He looked up at her stubbornly, his blue eyes set with determination. "I want to adopt Leon and then he can come here and live with us. We're not stupid, we know that if someone hasn't adopted him by now, then the chances of it ever happening are low, and if we don't hurry the state's gonna to take him away and put him in a foster home to open up more room in the orphanage for younger kids who might still be able to be adopted."

"I just… I just don't want him to have to move away if he doesn't want to. That's not fair."

"Oh, Cloud…" Mrs. Strife allowed the tear to fall this time despite her best efforts. "Honey, I don't think you understand how this works."

"I don't _care_ how it works." Cloud responded, moving out of his mother's reach as she was now trying to give him a hug. "He doesn't want to go somewhere else. He wants to stay here with us. He even said that he wouldn't mind having to share a room with me or to have to help Sora and Roxas or whatever it takes. It's not right to make him leave when he doesn't want to. It's not! So I'm going to adopt him and then he'll never have to go anywhere he doesn't want to again, and there's nothing you or anyone can do to stop me!"

"You really do feel like that strongly about this, don't you?" Mrs. Strife asked softly, not quite sure what to make of her son's new surge of maturity, but knowing that she was proud of him none the less. "And Leon said the same thing?"

"Well, he didn't have to." Cloud answered sourly, the expression on his face more than enough to let his mother know that he'd done most of the thinking on this one on his own. "It shouldn't matter whether he said it or not, you'd be an idiot not to know that's what he's thinking. Mom, he's scared… Edea told him that he's got maybe a year before the state comes for him. He doesn't have to say it out loud, but I know he's scared."

"I think we should talk to Leon about this before you go filling out all that paperwork." Mrs. Strife smiled warmly as Cloud reacted just the way she thought he would: By letting out a loud huff of air and plopping down on the nearest sofa.

"He's not going to want to do it if you talk to him about it." Cloud complained. "He's just gonna say that it's not my problem and that I should just butt out."

"Have you ever thought that he might be right?" Mrs. Strife asked carefully as she went to take up a seat next to him. "It's not your problem, and there really isn't much you can do if he decides that he doesn't want your help."

"I don't care what he says." Cloud was obviously not about to be swayed and Mrs. Strife steeled herself for the long battle she could suddenly see ahead. "Why should it matter what he says out loud when everyone knows what he really wants to say on the inside? Besides, you know it's right to adopt him. He's just a much one of us as I am, maybe even more so. Doesn't he deserve the chance to belong to a family?"

"Of course he does, baby…" Mrs. Strife wrapped her arms around Cloud's thin shoulders and rested her chin on his head when he curled into her embrace. "But things don't always happen the way we want them to in the real world. Sometimes we just have to live with a few disappointments, and sometimes those disappointments are going to be greater than they should be. I just don't see a way we can make it work…"

Cloud grunted and pushed his mother away violently, rushing to his feet and standing in the center of the living room with his hands planted firmly on his hips. Mrs. Strife literally withered against the couch cushions as she realized that she had probably said the absolute worst thing she probably could have at that moment.

"You're always telling me that because we're a family we have to work together even though we might not want to or if it's gonna be hard." Cloud sniffed and Mrs. Strife saw the trail of tears running tracks down his young face. "Well, Leon is family whether you like it or not, and I'm not going to give up on him!"

With that Cloud ran from the room, most likely in an attempt to hide his emotions from his mother. She watched him go without even making the slightest of moves to go after him, hearing the front door slam and knowing exactly where he was going to go. Since when had her baby decided to grow up?

She gave him a five minute head start, also knowing him well enough to know that he would hide somewhere so that all traces of any tears would be gone by the time he made it to the orphanage. The last thing he would want right now was Leon knowing that he had failed in his secret attempted to secure his friend's freedom and that he'd cried in the process. Cloud might have only been eleven, but he had come to know the rules of manhood long before he should have. There was to be no one outside of his mother who was allowed to know that he cried.

She made her way through the house, the distant sounds of her twins and Sora's friend playing upstairs the only thing to keep her company as she picked up the corded phone in the kitchen, dialing a number she already knew by heart. She counted three rings before someone answered and as the sounds of a cool female voice drifted across the line she knew what she had to do and some of the determination her son had so recently shown her reflected in her own blue eyes.

"Hello, Edea. It's about Leon… I think we need to talk…"

* * *

"Cloud! Leon! Mom says you have to clean your room before dinner or you won't get any cake!" Cloud groaned as the sound of his younger brother's voice broke his concentration for the fifth time that evening. If it wasn't Sora yelling up commands from his mother, it was Roxas trying to sneak in for a peak at what the older boys were up to.

"Cloud, I really don't think you should be doing that anyways." Leon spoke up from where he was reading a book on his bed. "Mom would be pissed if she knew."

"Which is why she's not going to know, asshole." Cloud mumbled to himself as he clicked the mouse a few more times. "Don't act like you don't want to know either. You're the one that told me about it."

"Yeah, but I didn't think there were going to be child blocks on the computers." Leon slammed his book shut. "It's not worth it. Hey, if you'll forget about it then we can sneak in the backdoor at the video store and pick up one of those Playboys the workers leave lying around if it'll make you feel better."

"We do that all the time." Cloud dismissed his friend with a wave of his hand. Honestly, they were twelve already. There wasn't much they didn't know about the inappropriate magazines older boys had a tendency of throwing out. "This is gonna be so much better than that when I get it fucking working."

Leon shrugged and flopped back down onto his bed. "You know I really didn't mean we had to drop everything and do this now when I mentioned it. In fact, dinner should be ready soon and I'm not going to miss out on Mom's cake just because you're obsessed with seeing shit you shouldn't be seeing."

"Jeeze, what crawled up your butthole and died?" Cloud sighed and turned to look at where his friend was now sending him a death glare from across the room. "If you didn't want me seeing it, then why'd you even bring it up in the first place?"

Leon rolled his eyes. "I dunno… I just did, okay? It's none of your business."

"Fine, if you don't care about this anymore then you can clean the room. I'm going to break through these security locks before dinner." And Cloud turned around to do just that, blatantly ignoring his best friend's irritated sighs behind him. "Besides, if you didn't really want me to know, then you wouldn't have said anything. Just because you're regretting this now doesn't mean that you didn't want me to know in the first place."

"Fuck you, Cloud, fuck you."

"Hmmmm." Cloud waved an unconcerned hand over his shoulder. "You know… If there's something that you wanna tell me, you can. I'm not gonna laugh at you or something."

Leon neglected to answer in favor of burying his head under his pillow in the hopes that his apparent disinterest would be enough to stop his best friend from finding the site he'd so carelessly let slip not even twenty minutes previous.

He had about five minutes under there in which he began to wonder exactly how long one could stay under their pillow before they would suffocate or succumb to the intense embarrassment that had sent them there in the first place before there came the tell-tale ping that meant Cloud was through the security their mom had set up and was now looking at the site Leon had discovered purely by accident earlier that day. He held back and groan and stuffed his nose deep in the comforter, realizing that the pillow wasn't blocking the oxygen flow nearly enough and that if he really wanted to die down here he was going to have to do it himself.

"You know, the way you were carrying on about this I thought it was going to be one of those sites where you watch people die or something." Now Leon could practically _feel_ Cloud rolling his eyes and he didn't know whether he wanted to be relieved that his best friend seemed unconcerned about what he had found or if he still wanted to suffocate. The odds were still tilted more toward suffocation. "Dude, Leon, it's just _porn_. What the hell were you worrying about?"

Leave it to Cloud to get right to the heart of the matter the only time Leon didn't want him to and Leon turned his head to the side so that his words wouldn't be quite so muffled. "No, it's not. Look, forget it ever said anything, okay? I just found it by accident."

"So what if you found it by accident? You thought it was important enough to tell me about." Leon knew Cloud was watching him now and waiting for him to come out from under the pillow and explain to him why he was acting like a kid, but Leon wasn't quite ready for that yet. "Damn it, Leon, you're being a baby about this. You can't possibly tell me that we haven't seen worse in one of those magazines."

"Of course it's worse!" Leon shot up on the bed in one fluid motion and sent a horrified look at his friend. "I mean just look at it!"

Cloud turned his head to give the screen behind him a thorough look. "I'm looking at it and I don't see anything wrong."

"That's two guys, Cloud!" Leon's voice was raised about half a decibel above its normal range and the exclamation point was more implied than really spoken, but he might as well have yelled as far as Cloud was concerned. "You can't tell me there's nothing wrong with that, and I was the one that found it, that told you about it. I've watched all but like two of the videos on that site and I _liked_ what I saw."

"Yeah, I like it, too. What of it?" Cloud was now turned back towards Leon and he'd placed his arms across his chest in his usual defiant manner.

"You what?" Leon's face was now contorted in a way that Cloud secretly thought looked silly, but he didn't dare laugh because whatever it was about the thought of Leon enjoying watching two guys go at it was seriously upsetting the other boy and Cloud knew from experience that Leon generally punched when upset, and that he punched hard.

"Hey, I don't have to tell you everything about what I do and don't do in my free time." Cloud shrugged easily. "Besides, there are more than just _girl_ magazines back behind the video store. Just because you've never found one doesn't mean that I couldn't have."

"But, Cloud, that's _gay_." Leon shuddered. "Not that there's anything wrong with that I just… Never thought I might like it you know…"

"Do you like looking at the girl stuff, too?" Cloud asked innocently, now completely understanding where Leon was coming from. They didn't have to be adults to know that there were people out there that thought anything different from what they thought or did was something to be punished. Leon was more sensitive to those kinds of people, too, though he would never have admitted it out loud. The blonde figured it probably had a lot to do with being teased in his younger years for not having any parents.

Leon thought about this for a second. "Well, yeah. You know I do."

"So what's the problem?" Cloud watched in satisfaction as Leon thought this newest bit of information through. "We're fucking twelve. We don't know what we want yet. All we know is that naked people are cooler than none naked people. I don't think we've quite gotten to the point where are hormones are going to let us choose which naked people look _better_ yet."

"I never thought about it that way." Leon mumbled to himself. "I just thought…"

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but then I started reading up on hormones and shit." Cloud leant back in his chair and smirked happily. "You know for someone who claims to be a genius you sure do get worked up about some stupid shit."

"You know, Mom's gonna get pissed if she hears us cursing like this." Leon said quickly changing the subject.

Cloud wanted to say something (most like with a new found curse words or two thrown in just to piss his adopted brother off) when there was a loud scrabbling noise from the other side of the door as Sora and Roxas very unwisely twisted the knob in order to walk in an undoubtedly announce that dinner was ready in the process of checking to make sure the older two's room was clean so they could have cake.

Unfortunately for the young twins, the porn Cloud had so recently discovered was still on the screen and in the panic of trying to make sure that his younger (more likely to tattle on him) brothers didn't see the forbidden pictures on his computer screen, Cloud threw the closest object to him. Luckily for the twins, he'd been aiming to scare them off and not to actually hit them or else there would have been some serious consequences all around.

And as the twins ran off screaming down the hallway Cloud and Leon looked in mild surprise to see a letter opener sticking straight out of the wall across from them, its point rather deeply embedded in the drywall after having passed through the narrow space between the twin's heads mere second before.

"Shit… Mom's going to kill me…"

* * *

"This is so fucking boring." Cloud sighed as rested his head against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall. "I can't believe you let Mom talk us into this."

"Blame Zack, don't blame me. I don't want to be here just as much as you don't want to be here." Leon scuffed his shoe angrily against the ground and rested a hip against a nearby sink. "At least _your_ date is capable of stringing together enough words to form a coherent sentence. Mine won't shut up about her fucking shoes and how excited she was to get them half off in what I'm am going to assume was a ritual offering to the devil."

"She's _not_ my date." Cloud responded angrily. "I don't even _know_ her. I am not going to allow my first date to be with some stranger I don't even care about just because my stupid cousin's girlfriend wouldn't go to homecoming unless her friends had someone to go with."

"Spoken like a true gentleman." Leon sneered and Cloud flicked him off. "But I have to agree, this is a stupid waste of our time. There has got to be something better we can be doing with our time than hiding in a bathroom hoping that our so-called dates don't think to look up here."

"Yeah, well I was the one to think of coming up here to get away from them, was I?" Cloud shot back. "I don't see you offering up any suggestions yet."

"Well, what do you want me to suggest to do? I hate to point this out to you, but there's not a lot of fun shit to do at a high school dance when we're supposed to be catering to two bimbos we don't even like." Leon grumbled angrily. "I hope to hell Zack gets lucky tonight because if he doesn't he's never going to get the fucking chance because I'm going to kill him. Yes, I think that's something we can do tomorrow at least… We can kill our cousin."

"Duh, that's a given, but I think you've given me a good idea as to what to do right now." Cloud spoke up after a moment of hesitation.

Leon perked up a bit at that. "What?"

"You wanna make out again?" Cloud asked happily. "We haven't gotten to do it in weeks because of Mom's hovering due to this stupid dance."

Leon shrugged. "I don't see why not, but we should probably go into one of the stalls first. Wouldn't want a teacher to come in and blow our secret to Mom."

Cloud nodded as he followed his friend into the only locking stall in the room. It had been about four months since the first time they had kissed on a dare at Zack's birthday party and ever since then they'd tried to find time to 'practice' as they called it whenever they could. Neither one could quite say what it was about it that made them want to keep doing it even when they knew their mother wouldn't be happy, or that they were probably much too young to be doing what they were doing. Besides, if they kept telling themselves that they were just practicing for that not too distant day in which they were going to have girlfriends they could put off the fact that it felt better than it probably had any right to.

And so there they were doing what they had done probably close to a hundred times before, testing and tasting with the vague thought at the back of their heads that someday there would be someone else in their arms, someone else they would want to hold tightly and do all these things to when Leon's hand slipped and went a little too far south.

They paused, both of them looking down at where Leon's offending hand was now resting on Cloud's ass. Both boys were stunned somewhere at the back of their minds, but it was Cloud who broke the awkward moment in typical Cloud fashion.

"If you wanted to grab my ass all you had to do was ask."

Leon gave up as good of a blush as he was capable of giving and tried to pull away quickly, only to find that Cloud was now grabbing on tightly to his shoulders and was not about to let him go. Positioning himself awkwardly against his friend's body, Leon allowed himself to be slightly pulled back into the blonde's loose embrace, fully aware of another little problem somewhere below his own southern border that would most likely have led to quite a bit more embarrassment than a silly wandering hand.

"Leon, we've been friends for a long time now, haven't we?" Cloud asked and Leon nodded. It was true. They had been friends for what often felt like forever and in that time they had done and seen some things that most friends never saw or experienced together. Cloud took a deep breath and continued. "And we're still going to be friends no matter what, right?"

"Of course. We promised, remember?" Cloud nodded slowly in a way that suggested his mind was very far away from there and off in some other plane and Leon furrowed his brow in confusion. "Why? What are you thinking about?"

"It's just… You know how Reno got caught making out with Tseng last week behind the school?" Cloud asked, seeming to change the subject from out of nowhere, but Leon knew better. Cloud was often the type to change the subject, but not when he had been the one to bring it up.

"Yeah, everyone remembers that. They got suspended and Reno's mom stormed up to the school in a rage to yell at the principal during lunch for being a 'narrow-minded asshole fucker' is I think how she put it…" Leon shrugged uncomfortably. "Besides, it was just a stupid joke they were playing to see how much trouble they could get into, right? Reno said so himself."

"It wasn't a prank." Cloud said solemnly. "They meant it… Or at least Reno did. I don't know much about Tseng. They just got caught and Reno panicked so he told everyone it was a joke."

"How do you know that?" Leon asked part of him not wanting to know the answer and the other half excited beyond belief at what he was sure he was about to hear, but that half was being pushed so far the back of his conscious that it barely registered. "And why does it matter? It's no one's business what Reno wants to do with his life or who he wants to date."

"I know because _I_ was supposed to be the one making out with him back behind the school but I chickened out at the last second." Cloud was now avoiding any and all eye contact and his grip on his friend had loosened to the point where Leon could easily have stepped back out of reach, but he didn't. "And when he asked me to come with him he was dead serious and when I first agreed so was I. We weren't joking about anything."

"Cloud, what are you trying to say?" That was a stupid question and they both knew it, but it had to be asked and Leon waited patiently while Cloud gathered up the courage to say what he wanted to say.

"I'm trying to say that I think I might be gay…"

"Just because you wanted to kiss Reno?" Leon asked incredulously. "That's a big assumption to make based on one stupid thing."

Cloud shook his head vigorously. "No, it's not just that. It's like that porn we watch sometimes with two guys. I like watching it more than you and when I watch I'm not thinking about women either. I'm thinking that I would really like to try that sometime… Just like that… No women involved."

"And you never told me this?" Leon was appalled, but not at the fact that Cloud was admitting to possibly being gay mere minutes after they had been kissing contentedly. "I thought you trusted me enough to tell me everything. Why wouldn't you tell me if you were so worried about it?"

Cloud shrugged easily. "Because I didn't really understand what I was feeling until last week when Reno asked if I wanted to kiss him. Actually, I really just tried not to think about it, but then he came up to me and when he asked I suddenly realized that, yeah, that's kind of what I want to do now that I think about it. In fact, I realized that I didn't really want to kiss a girl ever. They just aren't what I want, and not just because they have boobs or whatever. They're complicated and they get angry over nothing and they get upset just because their socks don't match or that smelly shit they always spray on themselves isn't smelly enough or whatever. I don't want all of that hassle, not even for the prettiest girl in the world, no thank you."

Leon thought this over for a second before staring at Cloud's face until the blonde got the hint and turned to look him in the eye.

"Am I weird, Leon?"

"You're not weird." Leon said automatically even though he knew that he and Cloud were probably the weirdest kids on the planet. But that really had nothing to do with what Cloud was trying to say or what he was asking. He didn't care who thought he was weird or stupid or fat or whatever so long as Leon didn't, and he didn't even need to say it out loud for the brunette to know what he'd meant. "To be completely honest with you, girls kind of freak me out, too, though I have to say their boobs kind of make up for a lot of their craziness."

They stood in silence for a minute each lost in their own thoughts before Leon spoke up once more with one last question.

"So why did you chicken out and no go with Reno?"

Cloud sighed heavily. "I hoped you wouldn't ask me that. I told you already, I chickened out. That means I was scared and didn't want to do it anymore, okay? Can't we just let this drop and go back to the stupid dance? It's probably almost over and I'll bet Zack's looking for us so that we can finally get the hell out of here."

"There's another two hours left, we haven't really been gone that long." Leon glanced down at his watch. "Actually, we've only been gone about twenty minutes. Seems like forever though. Now, don't change the subject again, why did you get scared and decide not to go with Reno?"

"Well, I don't exactly have a long kissing resume behind me, now do I?" Cloud shot back defensively, unconsciously pressing back against the stall's wall and away from his friend. "And besides, if I want to kiss guys then I'm going to eventually get to the point where jut kissing them isn't going to be enough and then I'm going to want to do that other stuff with them, too, and I don't want to."

"But you just said…"

"I know what I just said!" Cloud snapped, more angry at himself than his friend. "Look, all that stuff we see on the computer and in the magazines doesn't look all that fun and happy and shit. It looks like it hurts. I knew that if I went with Reno and I kissed him, then we probably would have started doing that more often and then there would come a time when just kissing wasn't enough and we were going to want to do those others things and I just don't want to… And none of this is your damned business anyway so butt out!"

At this point Cloud tried to forcefully push past the other boy and get out of the increasingly cramped bathroom stall and end the conversation once and for all, but he found that he couldn't as Leon now had a hand on his chest and was pushing him back. The blonde growled low in his throat, not in the mood to be cornered at the moment after spilling his guts about something that had been bothering him for a long time and after admitting to being a coward. In fact, he wanted to get so far away from that bathroom right then that he had fully intended to go straight home, ten mile walk or no.

"Cloud, stop!" The blonde looked up as he sensed the force in his friend's tone and stopped trying to struggle his was out of what he viewed as a bad situation. Leon quickly jumped in with what had to say in that moment of stunned silence as he knew he probably wasn't going to get another chance if Cloud were allowed to open his mouth and go off on another tangent (which was so what he was going to do). "It's not stupid to be afraid of that. It would be stupid _not_ to be afraid. We're only thirteen; no one our age knows what to do about… Sex…"

Cloud snickered a bit at that and Leon continued in an attempt to make sure the conversation stayed in his court until he'd said what he wanted to say. "See, I can't even say it right. There is no way in hell you, or Reno, or I or even Zack down there with his girlfriend are ready for that. You're not the only one, okay, so don't go thinking that you're some kind of freak or something… And besides, no one knows what to do that first time or if it's going to feel good or bad… You aren't going to know until you try it for yourself."

"Yeah, and what if I royally suck ass at it and whoever it is I end up with laughs at me?" Cloud frowned and punched Leon in the shoulder when the brunette let out a chuckle at that. "Fuck you, Leon, it's not like you don't think about it."

"You're right, I do think about it." Leon admitted. "So we've established that you're scared and that you're worried someone is going to laugh at you if you don't do it right the first time, right?"

Cloud growled a bit but nodded. That was kind of what he'd been thinking as embarrassing as that was.

"Well, I wouldn't laugh at you because I know just about as much as you do…" Leon paused for a second to allowed Cloud to catch up to his train of thought before going on. "So why don't we practice, just like we doing with the kissing? I won't laugh if you promise not to, and it's not like we'll take it personally or something like someone else will. Problem solved."

"Do you mean it?" Cloud asked tentatively, not willing to quite believe that the one person he never thought he would have a chance with was offering everything he wanted with no strings attached. "I mean we're not going to get home and you're going to change your mind and tell Rinoa all about how I was being a big baby in the morning?"

"What kind of best friend do you think I am?" Leon sounded offended, and to be truthful, his kind of was. He had thought Cloud trusted him more than that. "Here, to prove it we can keep making out until it's time to go. I'll even squeeze your ass again if you want me to."

Now it was Cloud's turn to think things over. "I guess so…. And it would just be practice?"

"Yeah, just practice…"

"Okay! Let's do it!"

* * *

"No, Rinoa, I really don't think I can come over tonight…" Leon sighed heavily into the phone as Cloud rolled his eyes in the background and pretended to be busy on his computer. "We've got that big math project due in the morning and Cloud and I haven't even looked at yet… Yes, I know it won't take me that long to do my share of it, but since I want to get an A I've got to help Cloud with his half."

Leon paused for a moment as Rinoa chattered angrily into his ear. "I know it's not fair for me to do most of the work and for him to still get the A, but that's just the way it's going to have to be." Leon sighed once more. "Fine, I promise to try and get it done as soon as I can, but I can't promise that I'm going to be able to come over there later. You know my mom doesn't like me driving late. I don't want to worry her."

Now Cloud was sighing in the background, already bored with the conversation and wishing that it would end soon so he wouldn't have to listen to Leon in the background while he was trying to concentrate on his Solitaire game that he was trying to pretend was work.

"Well, worse comes to worse, I'll see you in school in the morning, Rin." Leon attempted to placate his apparently angry girlfriend one last time and it seemed to be working. The voice on the end of the line had lost some of its shrillness at least. "Yes, yes, I promise to get you breakfast before I show up. Yes, I know. Uh huh… Good night, Rin…"

There was a small click from Leon's end that signaled the end of the call and Cloud swiveled around in his chair with his arms crossed and a look that could kill.

"Why'd you lie to her?"

Leon looked up and sent back his own equally irritated facial expression. "What are you talking about? I didn't lie to her."

"You told her we still have to do our project. You've had that done for over a week now." Cloud accused, not quite sure why he was angry that Leon was neglecting his girlfriend, but more than ready to embrace the emotion because it was better than the jealousy that normally took hold whenever Rinoa called. "You could be over there in like ten minutes and she would be happy, but you lied to her instead."

"I told her that I just wasn't in the mood to come over first, but she wouldn't let it drop." Leon pointed out. "I just don't feel like going anywhere tonight… Especially not tonight."

"And why the hell not?" Cloud was apparently not about to let this drop and Leon wondered in the back of his head why he thought hanging out with his friend would be more entertaining than hanging out with his girlfriend. Cloud was being whinier than she had been. "She called you to see if you would want to spend some quality time with her. You two hardly see each other outside of school and our house anymore. What's so bad about going over there to be with her family for once?"

"That the point." Leon stated. "Her family's not going to be there for most of the night. Her cousin is getting confirmed across town and they didn't have enough allotted seating space for her to come along."

"All the more reason for you to want to go." Cloud continued on stubbornly. "Without her parents hanging around you two can do whatever you want. You two haven't had sex for months."

"You know, the way you seem to know all the intimate details of my sex life should really creep me out but right now I'm too tired to do much more than sleep." Leon then collapsed down onto his bed and went limp; hoping as he usually did that his disinterest in his friend would make the blonde stop bothering him. It failed to work, just as it always did.

"It's not that hard to know about your sex life when you share half of it with me." Cloud sniped back, not quite ready to let the subject drop because there was something bothering Leon even if the brunette didn't want to talk about it, and Cloud was never one to not get down to the bottom of things where Leon was concerned. The other man had a bad tendency to bottle up his issues until they became too big for anyone to handle. "Come on, she seemed eager enough so it's not her wanting to break up with you again that you're worried about… So what is it then?"

"I just don't want to have sex with her tonight, okay?" Leon spat out before rolling over and staring resolutely at the wall. "That's why she called to have me come over. She only does that when her Mom and Dad are gone since they really don't like me all that much. I'd rather just not go over there at all and listen to her bitch about it in the morning than go over now and piss her off because I don't want to do anything."

"If this is about her parents, you know they don't matter. They're complete and utter idiots if they don't see that you're probably the best thing that's ever going to happen to Rinoa." Cloud rubbed a hand over his forehead in agitation. "But that's not what's really bothering you, is it?"

"It's part of it." Leon blew out a loud huff of air and rolled over onto his back. "I've just been doing some thinking lately, and I'm starting to think they might have the right idea of me after all."

Cloud inclined his head for his friend to go on, knowing that even though Leon wasn't looking directly at him, he would sense the gesture.

"I just don't think I'm the right guy for her. I mean… When we're together it's all good and wonderful and whatever, but then she'll dump me or stop returning my phone calls for a week or something and I don't even hesitate." Leon turned his head so that he could catch Cloud's eye. "Within hours of her breaking up with me or not answering her phone I'm right back in bed with you, so what's the point?"

"That's more my fault than yours though." Cloud answered back automatically. "I mean you're never the one that asks for it and it's technically not cheating since she broke up with you at the time. Besides, you love her enough to go back to her every time so it's not that big a deal what you decide to do in the meantime. You are a guy after all. No one would fault a guy for relieving himself wherever he can when his girl has left him for an undetermined period of time."

"That's a shit excuse and I'm no better than you so don't you try and pin all the guilt on yourself." Leon went back to staring at the ceiling. "I could tell you 'no'. I could tell you that I'm waiting for her to cool down and that I love her and wouldn't want to do anything that would hurt her, but I don't because I don't feel like that. To be honest, I kind of like it when we're not going out. She puts a lot of pressure on me and I don't like that more than I like to be with her."

Cloud was silent more out of disappointment than any real shock. He'd probably known long before Leon had that Rinoa wasn't going to work out, but he hadn't said anything. Of course, that was very much like him never to say anything until it was almost too late to matter.

"You don't like it when we're together either." Leon wasn't really making an accusation. He was merely stating a fact so Cloud let that point go without any argument and Leon went on. "You don't say anything, and you try to do everything you can to make sure that I treat her right. You help me pick out gifts, you think of places for me to take her that she'll like and that won't bore me to tears, and you make sure that I don't go out there and say something entirely brain-dead while trying to be romantic. Sometimes I think you have more investment in my relationship than I do, but at the same time I know it bothers you."

Cloud shrugged, now not really wanting to be having this conversation since it had turned to put him in the spotlight. "It's no big deal. I mean, I should be kind of protective over you what with you being my brother and all. It should bother me when she hurts you or does something that offends you even when she doesn't mean to do it. It's kind of what brothers do, and since Roxas and Sora aren't really all that old enough to help me so I guess I kind of do it all by myself."

Leon could have called bullshit on him right then and there but he didn't. There wouldn't have been a point. Neither one of them probably knew what it was that had them constantly coming back together again no matter how many times they both told themselves it was for the best for them to move on. And so he knew what Cloud had said wasn't the truth, hell, it probably wasn't even _partially_ true at that point, but it wouldn't have been worth it and so he let it go.

And later that night, when the whole house was asleep and Cloud was snoring lightly at his side he stared up at the ceiling once more and cursed to himself because he was finally starting to see what Cloud had known all along. They were never going to be able to escape each other. They were never going to _want_ to escape each other. Conventions and expectations were going to tell them differently, but that wasn't going to matter, and he suddenly found that he didn't quite mind it as much as he should have.

The next morning he broke up with Rinoa once and for all and he never looked back.

* * *

"You know we're going to have to tell her sooner or later." Leon watched with barely concealed lust as his best friend and lover paced across the room, pulling off his soaked sweater as he went and leaving his chest exposed for proper ogling. "Cloud, will you slow down for two seconds and listen to me… By the way, running away and into a thunderstorm to rival a hurricane when I said 'We need to talk' wasn't exactly your best idea."

"When people on TV say that nothing ends well. I figured if I went and caught pneumonia then you'd feel bad enough for me that you wouldn't want to break up." Leon rolled his eyes and opened his mouth. "And before you say anything, I know you weren't trying to break up with me, but I didn't want to talk about Mom either so there."

"So what you're saying is that this is something that she does not need to know about ever." Leon pondered this for a second. "So for the rest of our lives we're going to pretend to our mother that there is absolutely nothing between us and we're just going to have to live with her throwing women on us to marry and have kids with. Or are you trying to say that none of that is going to matter because we're not going to be together long enough for it to be an issue? Cloud, is there someone else?"

"Don't be a dick." Cloud ground out through clenched teeth as he rummaged through the clothes in his closet for something dry and warm. "Sephiroth was the last mistake I'm ever going to make and you fucking know it so just let it drop."

"Then why are you so afraid of talking to Mom?" Leon asked relentlessly. The only way anything was ever going to get resolved when Cloud was involved was to keep pushing him until he finally realized arguing took up more energy than just agreeing and getting it over with. "Do you think she's going to kick us out of something? I really don't think she would go that far. I mean, she might not be one hundred percent happy about it, but she wouldn't care in the end. She is letting Roxas date that jerk Axel after all."

"I know she's not going to kick us out. Against her better judgment she does love us." Cloud straightened up and turned around, running a hand through his damp spikes. "I'm more afraid of her killing us when she finds out that we've been together intimately under her nose for years without thinking of telling her, and she's not going to take our excuses that we were just playing around until we found someone else either. Especially not when we've pretty much decided that there's never going to be anyone else at this point."

Leon winced. "Oh… I didn't think about that. She is going to kill us, isn't she?"

"Yes, and so we should never tell her and live forever with her misguided attempts at getting us to settle down." Cloud shrugged. "I've come to terms with this and so should you. Now, if you don't mind, I would like to change into clothing that is not currently soaking wet so I don't catch a cold."

"I think I'd like it a lot better if you would just take all your clothes off and leave them off." Leon was very quick to voice this newest opinion as he very much enjoyed it when Cloud was naked and he knew that chances of him getting lucky were proportionate to the amount of clothes Cloud was wearing on his body at any given time.

"It is too fucking cold for that." Cloud grumbled and turned back to the closet, gully intent on finding his missing sweatshirt. "I know you're going to say something about how it's my own fault if I'm cold, but I really don't care to fight with you at the moment. All I want is to be warm again before my fingers fall off."

"I could help you warm up." Leon muttered suggestively from across the room.

"I still fail to see how being bare-ass naked is going to help me warm up." Cloud answered back, still resolutely facing the other way as he was now determined not to give in for the sake of not giving in more than any real desire to avoid sex. "Also, doing what you are suggesting doing would end in my expending more heat than I probably should at the moment from exertion. Then I'd get sick and you'd have to explain to Mom why I ended up missing two days in a row when we're supposed to be in school right now."

"I think being sick is a legitimate excuse for being absent two days in a row." Leon pointed out. "She doesn't have to know I was with you on the first day."

"But she so would." Cloud sighed heavily and turned around with his arms crossed over his chest in what was supposed to be conveyed as a self-conscious gesture, but in which the true meaning was lost on the other boy because they both knew Cloud liked it when Leon paid attention to him when half-naked. "I'm going to assume you hid my sweatshirt and you're not going to tell me where it is until I have sex with you."

"You would assume correctly." Leon responded coolly as the hint of smirk traced its way across his face. "Look at it this way, how often are we left alone in the house on a Monday morning with Mom at work and Sora and Roxas at school? This is an opportunity that doesn't come around very often and we should probably enjoy it while we can."

"Fuck it." Cloud reached up and ran a hand through his damp hair before making his way slowly across the room. "It is _so_ not worth arguing with you about this right now."

"That's what I thought…" There was something else witty and sarcastic that went with Leon's latest statement, but whatever it was had been quickly but surely stopped by Cloud quickly placing his lips over the other male's.

They easily slid against each other at that point with Cloud slipping his chilled fingers up Leon's body to tangle in the short hair at the nape of his neck and with Leon's fingers making much the same journey in the opposite direction to come to rest pressing gently against Cloud's hips bones. They had done this countless times in the little over four years they had been 'fooling around' as Cloud liked to put it, and they still fit together in much the same way they had when they been thirteen and hadn't really known much of what do.

But they were no longer thirteen, and the years had brought about a level of maturity in them that the world didn't often get to see. And so it wasn't long before they were both naked on the bed with Cloud perched on Leon's hips with the other man groaning his approval as Cloud sank down slowly onto his erection. They were both far past the stages of quiet exploration. They both knew what they wanted and they were fully aware of what they had to do to get it.

It didn't take long for them to reach a much faster pace and both boys had their heads thrown back in a type of sinful prayer that lovers the world over used again and again. And as Cloud rose and fell above him, Leon added his own personal 'thank you' to that prayer. He didn't quite know what he had done to deserve something like this, but he knew that he would do it again and gladly if it meant that Cloud would continue to thrust down on him in a way that had him seeing stars.

However, the moment was ruined when there came a small sound from somewhere off to the left. Both boys turned their heads and froze, along with the figure staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed in the doorway.

It took all three parties a moment to gather their wits and to assure their minds that, yes; they really were seeing what they thought they were seeing before Cloud, Leon, and the recently arrived with a fresh basket of clean laundry Mrs. Strife all screamed one word at the same time before making three separate dives for the relative safety of the blankets and the hallway with the door slamming shut in the process.

"FUCK!"

* * *

"Is there a particular reason as to why he's gone and locked himself in the bathroom this time?" Mrs. Strife asked, her voice much more calm than she felt on the inside. Leon looked up from his intense study of the floor, oversized tank top he'd managed to grab in the ten seconds that had been allotted to him before his mother had barged back in again falling a bit off his right shoulder. She stared at him for a moment before he shrugged and went back to watching the floor as though it was going to open up and save him at any moment.

"I don't know for sure, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that you just barged in on us in a compromising position not even two minutes ago." Leon sighed and curled his bare toes in tighter again the mattress as he pulled his sweatpants clad knees up tighter against his chest. "To be perfectly honest, had he not gotten there first and locked the door in my face, that would be me in there."

"Nice to see that this hasn't changed you enough so that you've entirely forgotten your love of throwing each other to the wolves." She then turned back to the closed door in front of her and rapped her fist impatiently against the offending wood. "Cloud Edward Strife, don't you dare make me come in there and drag you out kicking and screaming. I thought we got over that when you were ten."

"You can't make me!" Was the only response she received and the older woman placed her head in her hands and sucked in a deep breath for patience.

"He's not going to come out on his own." Leon muttered from his place on the bed. "You're going to have to go in there and drag him out and he's still going to fight you and cause a scene and this is going to take for-fucking-ever and I would really just like to go and die of embarrassment soon so I would like it if you would just skip to breaking down the door and dragging his ass out here whether he likes it or not."

"Leon, you are not helping matters." Mrs. Strife sent her adopted son a stern look that he decidedly ignored as the floor was still infinitely more interesting to him than his mother. "At least tell me this before I go in there and drag him out and attempt to get enough coherent words out of him to hear his side of the story… Why didn't you tell me about this? It's pretty obvious whatever it is has been going on for more than just a week or something. Why wouldn't you two say something to me?"

Leon let out a short huff of air and turned his gaze up to the ceiling. "You know, we were just asking ourselves that not even thirty minutes ago. To be completely truthful, I didn't think that you would need to know until like a few months ago."

Mrs. Strife abandoned her post staring down the door in front of her to turn and send a half-confused, half-hurt glance in the direction of her adopted son. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? How long _have_ you two been doing this?"

"It was four years on October fifteenth." Leon admitted, more than willing to give up the truth now that they had been caught red-handed. Honesty might not always have been the best policy, but with their mother it was known to save their lives from time to time. "It wasn't really a big deal."

"I beg to differ." Mrs. Strife placed her hands on her hips and now turned her full attention on the boy in front of her. Of course, she still kept her back pressed firmly against the door behind her in case her eldest decided to make a break for it (which was a very pressing and realistic concern at the moment). "I believe that not being told my adopted son was sleeping with my flesh and blood son is a really big deal. And what about Rinoa? I cannot believe you would stoop so low as to cheat on such a wonderful young lady. I think I can honestly say that I am ashamed of you for the first time in my life."

"I would never have cheated on Rinoa, Mom, and you know it." Leon shot back defensively glancing up to send his mother a potent glare before going back to memorizing the carpet pattern beneath him. "The times when we were going out, Cloud and I weren't together. Look, I'm sorry we didn't tell you sooner… Or more like before you found out on your own, but it just wasn't something that needed to be said at the time."

"And I'm to assume from your little speech that something has changed." Mrs. Strife stated wearily. "Well, go on, you've been caught with your pants down now. You might as well go on and tell me everything."

"Hey, I didn't expect to fall in love with him, okay, so you can just get off my case."

There was a stunned silence following Leon's outburst and Mrs. Strife staggered forward a bit as the shock from his revelation caught up to her. They stared at each other for what felt like forever before there was the muted sound of the bathroom door being pushed open just enough for Cloud to poke his head out.

"It's about goddamned time you admitted that, jackass."

Now Cloud was the one being stared at and he calmly came out from behind the door as though he hadn't been frantically crawling all over the bathroom mere moments before in a dead panic. He tugged gently at the collar of the sweatshirt he'd grabbed in his mad dash to his hiding place (the same sweatshirt he'd been looking for earlier that Leon had hidden in the folds of the bed's comforter) and adjusted the basketball shorts he'd pulled out of the dirty laundry hamper in the bathroom in order to preserve what little was left of his dignity. Clearing his throat he turned to his mother and looked her straight in the eye with a confidence she wasn't used to seeing from him.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything to you about this before, I really am, but Leon wasn't ready for that yet." Cloud sighed and rolled his eyes. "I guess that was to be expected from him, though. It took him ages to figure out that it wasn't a bad thing to like Rinoa after all. She'd only been after him like for two years before he got a clue. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for him to figure us out faster than that."

"So you didn't say anything because you didn't think _Leon_ was ready for it?" Mrs. Strife asked incredulously. "Cloud, even for you this sounds like a load of bullshit."

"No, Mom, he's right." Leon ran a hand through his hair for the twentieth time in the space of ten minutes. "Goddamn it I hate it when you're right about the important stuff…. So when did you figure it out?"

"I didn't have to figure it out." Cloud smiled softly before catching himself and frowning quickly to cover up his mistake. "Idiot… I've loved you since before Mom ever adopted you. I just didn't know what to call it until we were older. I was just waiting for you to catch up is all. I didn't want to be the one to hold you back if being with me wasn't what you really wanted."

"Oh boys…" Mrs. Strife wiped a happy tear from her cheek. "All you had to do was ask me and I could have told you that you two were perfect for each other from the beginning… Actually, I was kind of starting to hope that you _would_ fall in love with each other. I have never seen either of you as happy as you are when you're together when you're on your own… That and I don't think there's a person alive in this world that could stand either of you long enough to want to be with you forever."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence there, Mom." Cloud muttered sarcastically, about ready for the whole subject to be dropped now that their mom knew their dirty, little secret and Leon had finally admitted to what Cloud had known all along. All is all; pending cold from walking in the rain notwithstanding, it had been a pretty good day.

"I offer nothing but honesty." Mrs. Strife chirped cheerfully. She was fully aware that Cloud was becoming quickly uncomfortable with the situation and that he was probably secretly wishing she would just toss their laundry at them and go back to her unexpected day off. She didn't even have to look at Leon to know that not only did he feel much the same way, but that he was also slipping into what her twins would have called an 'embarrassment coma', the stress from being caught by his own mother in compromising condition and from finally admitting to something that he'd been keeping quiet for who knew how long catching up to him in one fell swoop. "Now, I'll just go put this clean laundry on Cloud's non-disgustingly dirty for once bed and get your dirty clothes from the bathroom and then the three of us can go out to lunch or something."

"Uh… That's okay, Mom." Cloud jumped in quickly. "You don't have to take us out to lunch. Besides… I think Leon may be dead or something… He's not really moving much after all. I'm sure he'd be happier just taking a nap or something until his brain reboots."

"There's a wheelbarrow in the garage. I suggest you go get it." Mrs. Cloud answered without skipping a beat. "Look at it this way; I could be forcing you to go back to school… You know that place where you are legally obligated to be? Yeah, that's the place. In fact, I'll bet if I hurry and get this laundry started there might still be time to call the office and tell them you're sick so you don't get a truancy mark against you… Again…"

Cloud winced. "Yeah, about those… We were so going to tell you about all those absences but…"

"But you didn't think your mother needed to know your secrets?" There came another pained wince from the peanut gallery. "Boys, I was your age once, too, although I know you probably will never believe it. There are more than enough things that are more important than school right now."

There was a very awkward silence following her statement that made it seem as though there was something more to her oldest children's deceptions than just keeping their love lives from her. Surprisingly enough, it was Leon to come up with the answer this time and she jumped a bit when his voice entered the random void that had appeared between them.

"We've been skipping school because we've been out looking for an apartment." The brunette blinked once very slowly and then came out of his self-imposed coma and back to life. "After graduation we were… Uh… Planning on moving out. Of course, we were going to tell you this at the same time we told you that we were, er, intimately involved, but you kind of beat us to the punch line on that one…"

"You're moving out?" Her eyes widened in shock and Mrs. Strife realized for the first time that there was going to come a day when all of her boys were going to grow up and grow out and away from her. No, that wasn't quite right. It was more like she knew but she just didn't want to think about it. She had hidden the knowledge away and chose not to look for it because it was better for her peace of mind to pretend that they were always going to be there. "Oh… I mean, of course you're moving out. You'll be going to college in the fall and I didn't _really_ expect you to commute all the way from here to campus. It's getting to be that time when you're going to need to step out and spread your wings."

"Yeah, but it's more than that." Now it was Cloud's turn to fade into the background. Leon was much better at explaining things than he was anyways and Leon took up the burden easily. "We're lucky enough to have decent scholarships so on-campus housing wouldn't really be a financial stress as far as our savings funds go."

"That does come with being the valedictorian and the salutatorian." Mrs. Strife cut in, even in moments of stress the proud mother who couldn't resist the opportunity to brag about her children's accomplishments. "But if you've got your housing covered, then why would you need to go out and find an apartment?"

"Because this is just something that we have to do for ourselves." Leon could tell that his mother wanted to say something so he leapt to justifying them before she could even open her mouth. "We've already got it calculated out. Our savings funds are more than enough to cover meal plans, dorms, and books. Our tuition is coved by our scholarships. As for the apartment, our earnings this year for our online business have never been better and we've been saving those in a separate account that we opened specifically for an apartment. It'll be a tight stretch at first, especially because we won't have the meal plans to rely on until college actually starts in the fall, but our projected earnings for the next few months, not counting the expected increase we may or may not see, meet the budget we drew up a few weeks ago. We've really thought this through and we think this is the best way to do things. It's more than about time for us to get our act together and to start the lives we want to live sooner rather than later."

"You really are going to be a good business manager someday." Mrs. Strife inhaled deeply. "But for now you are still my son living under my roof and you will go out to lunch with me and we are going to talk about all of these things we apparently should have been talking about a long time ago and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it."

"Mom…" Leon started to make another excuse but was cut off by Cloud.

"Of course we'd love to join you for lunch, Mom." He offered up the best smile and received a warm grin from his mother for his efforts. He knew when he was fighting a losing battle and he really did hate making his mother worry about them after all. He figured she deserved at least lunch after what she'd discovered that day. "And we're really sorry we never said anything about any of this before, but honestly it didn't really seem real to us either until recently. But don't think that just because we're moving out you're getting rid us for good. We're still going to come around to periodically drive you insane. You can't get rid of us that easily."

There was another silence following Cloud's words but it was more comfortable than awkward and once again Cloud proved that he was far more than the image he portrayed to the outside world. The three exchanged knowing looks and Mrs. Strife rescued the previously abandoned clothes from where they had fallen in the hallway and dumped them haphazardly on Cloud's bed. It wasn't like they cared about wrinkles anyways. They were teenage boys after all even though they were closer to the realm of adulthood than even they knew.

Cloud moved out of her way as she made her way towards the bathroom in order to collect the dirty clothes, fully intent on getting in and out quickly so as to allow her boys enough time to fix their appearances so they could all go out, but as she turned around with laundry basket in hand she caught sight of something that made her pause and gasp in surprise.

"Are those _teeth marks_ above the door!? How did you even get up that high?"

"Yeah… About those… Oops?"

* * *

"I don't like the looks of those closets, boys. They're so small…" Mrs. Strife frowned as she stood in the middle of the tenth empty bedroom that day. "And I think I saw a crack in the ceiling in the kitchen. You'll get roaches for sure."

"Mom, there is no crack in the kitchen ceiling and if there is it wouldn't be impossible to cover it." Leon spoke up from where he was scrutinizing the wall plug closest to the window. "And as for closet space, we really don't need that much if we're going to keep clothing at your house for when we want to visit."

"How's the power supply look, Leon?" Cloud stuck his head in the bedroom and ignored his mother's disappointed look. She'd been disappointed every since they'd agreed to go looking for apartments as a family that morning. He was starting to get used to it.

"It looks good." Leon straightened up and took one last long look around the room. "Three outlets in here and they all seem to be in good condition. We could pick up some heavy duty surge protectors and I think we'd been in business in no less than two days."

Cloud nodded thoughtfully. "I like it, and if we get that loft bed thing with the desk underneath then we can have a bed in here too in case one of us has to work late, and with two bathrooms there wouldn't be any need to wake each other up in the middle of the night if we had to stay up late."

"Cloud, you never work past ten and you know it." Leon ran a hand through his bangs and let out a pleased sigh. "But I do like this place. It's small, but not cramped, it's ten miles from home in case Mom gets bored and wants to bother us, and I'm about ninety percent sure there's not a meth lab somewhere on the complex."

"There were some suspicious looking white kids outside earlier so I'm only about eighty percent sure about the meth lab, but I figure even if there is one somewhere in here they wouldn't really have much to do with us unless you've got a secret meth habit you're not telling me about." Cloud leant against the doorjamb and turned to get his mother's approval. "What do you think, Mom?"

"I think I'm only fifty-fifty on the meth lab situation, but I'm not going to one hundred percent trust anywhere you wanted to live anyways." Mrs. Strife sighed and shrugged. "But I can't say that I think you're going to find a much better deal within your price range. What did the twins have to say?"

Cloud shook his head in amusement. "I dunno. The last time I saw them they had holed themselves up in the hall bathroom hovering over Sora's cell phone with Roxas' Gameboy on the floor between them. I'm not quite sure they don't think we're still in the first apartment we looked at today… Though maybe they still think we're in the second. The first one did have that major roach infestation. If I hadn't heard them squeal before I never would have thought they it was them running through the back bedroom with the fifty roaches of the apocalypse on their heels."

"Why does it matter what they think?" Leon asked next as he went to look out the window in order to see what they were going to be looking at while they were working for the next few years. "I highly doubt they are going to ever set foot in here after today. I love them to death, but if they are more interested in getting to level ten in their videogame than helping us look for our new home then I don't think they are going to be too terribly invested in coming to see us."

"Of course they are going to want to come see you!" Mrs. Strife seemed to take offense to any thought of her youngest boys not wanting to maintain ties with her older boys once they'd moved on. "If only because Sora is almost worse at math than Cloud and will want you to help him, Leon"

Leon rolled his eyes and turned back to the center of the room. "We'll see… Anyways, are we all agreed that this is place?"

Mrs. Strife hesitated for a moment before nodding. "Yes, I think I could possibly sleep fairly peacefully with you two living here. I'll support you if this is what you really want."

"It is what we really want." Cloud pushed himself off the wall and moved to put a gentle hand on his mother's shoulder. "We're going to have to start living for ourselves sooner or later and spending summers at home is not the way to do it. And look at it this way; we're not more than fifteen to twenty minutes away if you need us or if you just want to drop in to say hi."

"Oh baby, you know I would worry about you even if you had moved out into the backyard." Mrs. Strife smiled through the sudden veil of tears that had appeared in her eyes. "It's a mother's job to worry, and just so you know, I think you two are going to do wonderfully out on your own. Sure you're going to fight, and there are going to be times when you're going to want to give up on each other, but I know for sure that this is going to work out."

"I believe in you boys…"

"We love you, too, Mom. We love you, too."

* * *

"_I am so sick and fucking tired of you trying to fight my battles for me."_

Standing face to face with all their friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers standing around them watching they felt themselves drifting away from it all, to a place where it was just them and there was nothing more to be done and nothing more to be said.

"_What are you trying to say?" _

"_I guess that I'm over you, too."_

And in that one moment, all they had been working for seemed miles and miles away. They wanted to turn away then, the hurtful words caught in their throats but needing to be said.

And so they each took a deep breath, just like they had so many years ago when they had both been five and not quite sure what to call the new respect they had found for each other.

They took a deep breath…

And then they fell all over again…

"_So I guess this is goodbye?"_

"_Yeah… I guess it is…"_


	19. Day TwoHundredFortySeven: Et Tu Brute?

_**Chapter Fourteen**_

_**Day Two-Hundred and Forty-Seven Let's Give Them Something to Talk About**_

"No one's seen them since yesterday afternoon. Neither one of them are at the apartment and their dorm has apparently been cleaned out as of last Tuesday. Mom's about ready to send out the National Guard if they don't show up soon." Sora was curled up with his knees pulled back against his chest on the sofa in their mother's house. "_I'm_ about to send out the National Guard if they don't show up soon. I cannot _fucking _believe this happened."

"Sora…" Riku opened his mouth in an attempt to make his boyfriend feel better but he didn't even bother trying after all. Nothing he could say would make this situation any better. It was now less than five hours from Leon and Cloud's college graduation and neither of them could be located. "Never mind. I was going to say something about how everything is going to be fine, but I really don't think it will."

"Leon's the fucking valedictorian." Roxas stated in a much calmer manner than he really felt. "He's going to be there no matter what. He's gotta give his speech and Cloud's salutatorian again… I'm sure there's like some plaque he's going to be given or some picture he needs to be in or whatever the hell it is they do for people who are way too smart for their own fucking good. Cloud is many things, but humble is not one of them. He'll be there."

"You mean you _hope_ he'll be there." Sora grumbled unhappily. "Cloud is also a man who does not like confrontations and in case you didn't notice, he kind of had a big one yesterday. If there's even the slightest chance Leon might be there and they might get into another fight, then he's going to avoid the stadium at all costs."

"Fuck, Sora, at least I'm _trying _to stay positive!" Roxas growled low in his throat and Sora reciprocated the noise as both boys glared daggers at each other from their perches on opposite sides of the room. "Lying around on the couch moping all day isn't helping either."

"And what do _you_ suggest we do?" Riku immediately cut in so as to defend his boyfriend from Roxas' verbal attacks. "Frantically call their cell phones? Yeah, that was so totally going to work. If I'm avoiding people I tend not to answer their calls."

"Breaking into their apartment wasn't the most genius of ideas either, asshole." Roxas sniped from his corner. "Of course they weren't going to be in the one place everyone would think to check first."

"Well, wherever they are, they aren't together, that's for sure." Axel spoke up half-heartedly from his spot sprawled out under the coffee table. "Leon's dad was the last one to see Leon yesterday and all he'll say is that Leon was the worst mood he'd ever seen and that he was most certainly alone and didn't seem to have any plans to see any people any time in this next century."

"Shit, shit, shit, _shit_!" Sora slammed his fist against the side of the sofa in anger. "We're never going to find them and they're not going to be at graduation and they're never going to be friends again and it's all our faults!"

"Yes, it is all your faults." The four boys jumped in unison as Mrs. Strife stepped out from the hall where she had been listening to them argue for the past five minutes. "Everything bad that has happened to them since the beginning of the year is your faults and everyone who participated in that stupid bet's fault, but there's nothing you can do about it now. The time for making amends passed a long time ago and now you're just going to have to live with the consequences of your actions."

"We know, we know." Axel scooted out from underneath the table in order to sit up and look Mrs. Strife in the eye. "We were idiots. All of us were idiots. We did some stupid things and now a perfectly good relationship is ruined probably beyond repair and we're going to have to live with that for the rest of our lives, but that doesn't mean we need to just sit around here feeling sorry for ourselves. They'll be at graduation… I know they will and then maybe we'll be able to talk to them… Apologize for what we did and take whatever punishment they choose to dole out. This thing doesn't have to be over yet, so why are we giving up?"

"Because it _is_ over." Sora buried his head in his hands. "By noon today when they don't show up to walk across that stage Luxord will be busy parceling munny to Rinoa and Seifer and Reno and god only knows who else and our brothers will be out there somewhere alone and mad at each other and they won't know why. Sure they may find out about the bet eventually, but they still won't understand. After all, they thought they had _friends_ in school. They thought they had people they could rely on and now they're going to know that they don't. Even us, their own _brothers_, bet on them. We played just as dirty as the rest of you when it came down to it. Even if by some miracle they can go back to being friends, they're never going to trust any of us ever again, so they're always going to be alone and we're going to have to live with that guilt for the rest of our lives."

"They'll trust you again." Mrs. Strife's voice was soft but it carried a hefty weight to it none the less. "They would do anything for you boys. They're going to be hurt and wounded and they might not speak to you for awhile, but they are always going to be your brothers and they are always going to be there for you even when you don't know they're there. And they are eventually going to be able to be there for each other again, too. Just have faith in them."

There was a brief silence after her words and the boys exchanged hopeful glances. Maybe nothing like this had ever happened to them before, and maybe Cloud and Leon were the most stubborn people on the face of the planet, but they were good brothers despite it all. It was going to take some time, and it wasn't going to be easy, but someday they would be able to look back on this together and know that they were still a family and they weren't going to be torn apart so easily.

At least that's what they hoped.

"Mom…" Sora took a deep breath and looked at his mother as though he were begging for her to say something to put his mind at ease. "All we want to do is say we're sorry so that things will go back to normal."

"Oh, baby." Mrs. Strife smiled softly, but there were the ghosts of uncertainty in her eyes. "Things are never going to go back to the way they were, but there is nothing to say that they can't get better. Leon and Cloud have been friends for longer than some people have been siblings and I highly doubt that something like that is going to change just because they got into a big fight. Hell, they've been fighting each other from the first moment they met. It's going to take time, but I really don't think everything is lost the way you do."

"You weren't there, Mom. You didn't see it." Roxas closed his eyes in frustration and tipped his head back to rest against the back of the chair he was sitting in. "I have never seen Cloud more serious than he was then, and Leon looked crushed. I have never seen him not know what to say, but for a minute he was speechless. It was almost like someone had pulled a rug out from under his feet. It scared me to see him like that, Mom. It scared me…"

"Look, it does no one any good to just sit around here chasing the same depressing topics and guilt around in circles. " Axel and Riku exchanged looks and got to their feet as the silver-haired youth uttered his latest statement. "Whatever happens is going to happen with or without or interference at this point. The only thing left for _us _to do at this point is to go back to campus and to wait for them to show up because _will_ show up."

"How do you know?" Sora inquired plaintively. He was so desperate for something good to happen that he was about ready to latch onto the first thing to show his true hope. "How the hell are you so damn sure about this?"

Riku shrugged tiredly. "I'm not, but if I don't find _something_ to believe in then I'm just going to go crazy and that wouldn't help matters even more."

There was a small silence in which the other boys all lurched to their feet. None of them were completely convinced but they realized Riku had a point. If they couldn't believe in Cloud and Leon's abilities to do the right thing when it really mattered, then they had nothing. Besides, sitting around in the living room being pessimistic was really starting to become more annoying than anything else.

"Alright then, to the stadium. It's about damn time we saw the end to this once and for all."

* * *

The stadium was packed with people and it took Zack and Aerith much longer to find the Strife family than they thought it would, but finally Zack (being the taller of the two) caught sight of Axel's hair from about fifty feet off to the left of them and they were able to elbow their way over to them before they got too much further away.

"Zack!" Mrs. Strife sagged with relief at finally finding her nephew and she wrapped her arms around him in greeting. "I thought we were never going to find you! This place is a madhouse!"

"I know it is." Zack pulled out of the older woman's embrace but didn't move too far away so as to still be able to be heard. It seemed that everyone who was gathered had something very important they wanted to talk about and they figured it would be best if they talked about it in as loud a voice as they could. "I take it you still haven't been able to locate my idiot of a cousin."

Mrs. Strife shot a sidelong look at where the twins and their boyfriends were distracted by fanning out to search the crowd for the missing boys before turning her full attention to Zack and Aerith. "Can't say that I have. No one's seen Leon since he had his little fit in Laguna's shop and no one's seen Cloud since you dropped him off at the bus station downtown, but I'm sure they'll be here if not a few minutes before the ceremony starts, then a few minutes after."

"Aunt Sylvia." Aerith lowered her voice about as much as she could considering the noise level. "How do you know that Cloud didn't get on that bus like he said he was going to? Normally I wouldn't even question it, but Zack and I had a long talk yesterday and I really don't think Leon and Cloud are the type of people to risk everything like this. It's just not their style."

"They also aren't the type of people to give up on a perfectly good relationship that they had to fight to get in the first place." Mrs. Strife reminded them gently. "They also made several promises to each other and they aren't the type of people to go back on a promise either. Just trust them for once… I know that's generally a bad idea as far as they are concerned, but I think that they know what they are doing for once. I might not like it, but no one would believe me even if I did say something at this point."

"We would believe you." Zack grumbled more to himself than either of his companions. "I just don't know, Aunt Sylvia. Like I said, normally I would agree with you, but this thing has gone so far out of hand already, it's hard to think that they know what they're doing. Hell, they've already had to change their plans twice because someone said or did something to fuck something up. Who's to say that they even _had_ a plan anymore? It's not like they tell any of _us_ anything."

"Zack, if there is only one thing I have learned from raising those boys, it is that I should never, _ever_ second guess them." Mrs. Strife placed a supportive hand on Zack's shoulder and sent Aerith a reassuring look. "They may not tell me things I think I should know, and they may have an odd way of handling their private lives, and they may even have a tendency to stick their noses in where they don't belong, but I do know that every single time I have second guessed them they have proven me wrong in a spectacular fashion."

Aerith nodded in agreement. "Maybe you're right and maybe we're worrying about nothing. We're not going to stop worrying though until someone sees one or both of them and we manage to get to the bottom of this once and for all."

"I don't expect you to." Mrs. Strife admitted. "I'm worried about them, too. I'm always worried about them. There's a difference in believing in someone and trusting them enough to never worry about them. I might believe in them but I don't trust them as far as I can throw them. They'd rather keep me in the dark about the things they think I'll disapprove of, and this is definitely something I would disapprove of, so, no, I don't have any idea of what they are going to do, if they are going to do anything, or where they are and that makes me nervous. It makes me nervous, but not about their relationship. They are perfect for each other and they know it. They aren't going to throw that all away just for a stupid prank or because someone told them to, and that's what I believe in."

"I sure hope so, Aunt Sylvia… I sure hope so."

* * *

"I half hoped Zack would have some kind of idea as to where they were." Riku muttered darkly as he rested his chin on his knees and stared down at the campus sprawled out below him from his perch on a raised stone railing outside the stadium. "I guess that's what I get for being positive."

"Meh, you got us out of the house. Now we can be miserable with a better view." Axel pointed out glumly. He sighed heavily and leant forward onto his elbows right next to where Riku was sitting. "Fuck, there are way too many people here. There were _not _this many people at Zack and Aerith's graduation."

"They're all here to see the show." Roxas pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed his back as hard against the railing as he could, the seat of his jeans scratching along the concrete beneath him. "Or to not see anything at all, as about half of them are hoping for. Face it, Leon and Cloud's graduation is going to be big news regardless as to whether they actually show up or not."

"I don't know whether I should someday aspire to be as popular and relevant as them or if I'd just be better off sliding away into oblivion." Sora groaned and allowed his head to flop over onto his twin's shoulder. "I'm leaning towards oblivion, but since we are going to be forever known as the younger brothers of two of the most insane people in the world I don't think I'm going to be allowed that luxury. We're just as famous as them and we haven't even done anything yet."

"I'm leaning towards moving to a place far enough away that no one has ever heard of either one of them." Roxas grumbled unhappily. "I'm not quite sure such a place exists at the moment… What are the odds of the Antarctic penguins keeping up with current events?"

"With your luck... I'd say much higher than you would think." Riku rolled his eyes in a sign of how he wished this whole affair was over and done with. "Though I do think you might be over exaggerating. Sure your brothers are big news around here, but that's mainly because we are a fairly small college town and any juicy news travels faster than the speed of light somehow. I sincerely doubt Cloud and Leon are as big a thing elsewhere as they are here. In fact, excluding the city that was unfortunate enough to house the amusement park they went to last month, I don't think any other city around here knows who they are."

"I think you may be underestimating them." Axel spoke up. "They are like that unstoppable force that does not obey the laws of physics or nature that lives on in rumors and the strange dreams of physicists. Also, if you move to get away from them the odds of them showing up for the sole purpose of doing this all over again are so high it's practically a sure thing."

"True shit." Roxas nodded his head in agreement. "Goddamn assholes are going to follow us to our graves whether they go back to being friends again or not. But look at it this way, I'm sure there were things we did back in the day that embarrassed the hell out of them. Maybe this is just some kind of cosmic payback. It's kind of what being brothers is all about."

"This whole situation sucks." Axel stated, once again proving that he was the undisputed master of stating the obvious. "I can't believe that we could have been such complete _idiots_."

"Well, that's not entirely true. I can believe that _you_ could be a big enough idiot for this." Roxas jumped in, never one to let an opportunity for making fun of his boyfriend go unused. "But I get what you're saying. There were plenty of times when we could have pulled out or said something to make this stop, but we didn't. We played the game and we lost. Nothing more, nothing less."

"Can we stop referring to this as a game?" Sora whined. "I know that's what it was, but it makes me feel better about myself if I at least _pretend_ that we had some kind of good intentions."

"We did have good intentions… Eventually." Riku bit his bottom lip thoughtfully as he watched hundreds of students make their way across campus on their way to the stadium. "It might have taken us awhile, but we figured it out in the end."

"No, you and Axel had good intentions from the beginning." Sora tapped his head lightly against the stone railing behind him. "It was Roxas and I that didn't care until it was almost too late to make a difference. Maybe if we had been like you two and cared straight from the beginning then things wouldn't have gotten this far. Maybe if we had stopped to think about what would have been the best thing for Cloud and Leon instead of thinking about what would have made us comfortable then we wouldn't be in this position and maybe Cloud and Leon could be in a happy relationship or busy laughing at us for seeing signs where there were no signs instead of who the fuck knows where. Fuck, for all we know, Cloud really did get on that bus Zack was talking about earlier."

"And for all we know he didn't." Riku was quick to remind him. "We don't know anything. Face it, we never knew anything. We're all assholes, even those of us who had so called 'good intentions', and there's nothing we can do about it until Leon and Cloud show up and stay in one place long enough for us to apologize, so we might as well go keep your mother company until that happens. I'm pretty sure she's not feeling very good about this either."

"I don't think Mom knows what to think anymore." Sora closed his eyes in the vague hope that when he opened them again it would be the first day of school all over again and they could do right by their brothers this time around. "No one has told her anything. She had to find out about Cloud and Leon's fight from Aerith and Zack, she found out about the bet through Laguna who only knew because Leon came in throwing a fit to end all fits about Cloud running away, and now she had no idea whether Cloud's on a bus or still somewhere in town and her adopted son's pulled a similar disappearing act. Such events don't exactly lead to a state of mind that is clear enough for rational thought, and even if she won't say it I know she's mad at us. We're probably the last people she wants to see right now."

"You know what? I'm not going to say we're not the last people on earth she wants to see right now and I'm not going to say keeping her in the dark was the right thing to do, but I am going to say that there is nothing more we can do about that aside from be there for her now for emotional support if nothing else." Axel straightened up and pushed away from the railing. "If there is one thing this fiasco should have taught us it's that we need to be there for each more so than ever. So why are we sitting out here feeling sorry for ourselves when your mom is in there worrying more about Cloud and Leon than we are?"

"Because I'm too depressed to feel sorry for myself around my mother." Roxas groaned but got to his feet none the less. "But why the hell not? There ceremony's going to start in like half an hour anyways and something tells me that decent seats are going to be harder to find the longer we wait."

All four boys muttered various obscenities under their breathes as they lurched to their feet mostly against their wills. None of them wanted to be there. In fact, three out of four of them were wishing they had never met either Cloud or Leon, and the fourth was just glad that this wasn't happening to him for once. It wasn't very often that he wasn't the one in danger of making a fool of himself for the entertainment of others and it felt better than he had ever hoped it would.

"Hey, let's look at it this way…. No matter what happens after this point… At least after today it'll be all over…"

"About mother fucking time, too."

"Agreed."

* * *

An unprecedented hush fell over the stadium as the opening strains of Pomp and Circumstance began to well up from the orchestra set up behind the stage. Everyone's eyes and attentions (minus the attentions of any children under the age of ten in attendance) were focused intently on the stage where the dean as well as several professors were taking their places in the folding chairs waiting for them, but the two chairs the audience were most interested in stayed depressingly empty.

It didn't take long for the administrators to settle in and the enthusiastic graduates began their steady march into the chairs on the stadium floor in front of the stage. Aside from the unnatural hush of those watching it could almost have passed for a normal graduation. The only visible instances out of place were the glaringly empty chairs on the stage and the way each and every graduate paused ever so slightly as they cleared the hall they were coming from in order for them to look up at said empty chairs and either sigh heavily or allow a small smirk or grin to appear.

Cameras flashed as friends and family watching from the sidelines took pictures of their loved ones as they walked to their seats in their black robes with smiling faces despite the palpable pall that was settled over the proceedings. They were still proud of their accomplishments even in the midst of the campus-wide crisis and the few people in the stands lucky enough not to know or care about the bet clapped and whistled, prompting those who were worried about the bet to join in so as not to look too much out of place. And as the enthusiasm for those students who had worked themselves nearly to death for four years in order to earn the honor to stand here today in order to be presented their diplomas, Cloud and Leon were temporarily forgotten by pretty much everyone not related to them for the first time since before the school year had begun.

But it didn't take long to be reminded of them and once each and every graduate had made his or her way to their seat, the dean rose and made his way to the podium front and center and everyone's eyes were once again drawn to the empty chairs on the stage as they all wondered exactly what the dean was going to say in order to explain away the missing valedictorian and to cover for the speech he was supposed to give.

"Now would be the time in which to congratulate each and every one of you that has managed to make it here today. It hasn't been easy. You have all had challenges that you have had to face in order to gain the privilege of receiving your degrees today." He paused for a second and his watery grey eyes took in the young people in front of him. "Now would also be the time to introduce this year's business class' valedictorian Leon Strife-Leonhart, but I unfortunately received a call from him yesterday evening in which he informed me that he and this year's salutatorian Cloud Strife-Leonhart have fallen ill and both will not be able to make it here today. As such, it is my pleasure to be able to introduce your non-ill commencement speaker Miss Yuffie Kisaragi in their stead."

The stadium clapped politely and a few of the graduates and audience members exchanged confused looks. Yuffie was not exactly the type of person they had figured the administrators would go for when they set about picking the commencement speaker. Not that she wasn't smart, or that she didn't have the capability to be mature… She just chose not to be for the most part.

And so it was with a mixture of confusion and mild trepidation that they watched as she bounced her way over to the podium and cleared her throat in preparation for her speech.

"I know what you're all thinking." Yuffie chirped happily as she winked at the crowd. "How could I have submitted an application and speech good enough to convince the administrators that I wasn't going to do something stupid and risk ruining the ceremony? To be completely honest, I never even _considered_ applying to be the commencement speaker until Leon asked me to, and even then he had to twist my arm a bit to get me to agree to do it."

"And it was because of him that I got the job, too. We wrote our speeches together for the sole purpose of making sure they flowed so well the administration wouldn't be able to say 'no', but he's not here right now, which is probably a good thing. Those speeches kind of sucked anyways." Yuffie smirked and seemed to suddenly sober up. "And it wasn't like we were planning on giving them anyways. I must be the best damned friend in the world for agreeing to do this in the first place. I mean it's not like this is my high school graduation again. That was nothing. I had to work hard to get here and I really was hoping to _not_ cause a scene, which I'm sure none of you believe."

It was at this point that those in the audience and the graduates eagerly awaiting their diplomas suddenly realized that this might not be as over as they had thought it was. Yuffie was after all the only one close to Leon and Cloud who at this point might know where they were or what they were planning. Was it really so far-fetched to believe that they could have been planning something for this day all along?

No, they figured, it wasn't.

"But I guess now I've gone and deviated from my pre-written speech and I'm sure our wonderful administrators are quite pale in the background so I might as well finish what I was asked to start." She shrugged and offered up the closest she could come to an apologetic smile as she began to step away from the microphone. "So without _any_ further ado, I give you the two most wanted men on campus: Leon Strife-Leonhart and Cloud Strife-Leonhart. I hope you boys are happy with yourselves."

"Oh, we are." There multiple gasps from the crowd and some yelled expletives. One or two of the females fainted and more than a few people rose to their feet in either happy surprise or angry surprise. Mrs. Strife merely sighed and put her head between her hands as her two missing sons made their way from the back of the room each one with a wireless microphone in their hands and victorious smirks on their faces. Cloud waved at the crowd gathered and went on. "We are actually _very_ happy with ourselves right now. In fact, I don't think I've ever been happier."

"And don't act like we twisted your arm to do that either. You were all ready and willing to go once you'd figured out what we wanted to do." Yuffie laughed loudly and Leon sent her a genuine smile. "You were right about one thing, though. Our speeches really did suck."

"That they did." Cloud agreed as both boys made their way to the now-empty podium with the whole school staring at them as though they'd died and come back including, but not limited to, the administrators and professors gathered on the stage. The blonde paused for a second and turned to address the audience for the first time. "Trust me, they were about taking pride in your work and persevering through tough times and shit like that. You wouldn't have been interested. We're really kind of doing you a favor."

"We're doing them more than just a favor." Leon added. "We're giving them the answers they have so desperately wanted since the beginning of the school year…"

It was at this point that the entirety of the audience took in a deep breath of air and those who were unlucky enough at that point to have seats the closest to the two boys unconsciously sank back as far as they could into their chairs in an attempt to get as far out of flying leap distance as possible.

"You thought we didn't know." Leon was the one to take on the burden of explaining what they were doing as Cloud and Yuffie exchanged high fives in the background. "You thought that you had all the cards, that there was nothing we could do to stop you, that you were the ones calling the shots, but you never were. We were the ones calling the shots from the very beginning. We knew just about everything and it's all because of the wonderful Ms. Yuffie Kisaragi. Yuffie, you may take your bow now."

He went on as Yuffie did just that, making as grand a spectacle out of it as she could. "She got us inside information for just about everything, and you guys just gave it to her on a silver platter. It was almost too easy. We couldn't have done it without her."

"Now, I'm sure you're wondering exactly what it is that we did, other than prevent you from taking us by surprise that is." Leon was on a roll now and everyone was hanging on to his every word, even those who were more than a little concerned about saying some not too flattering things about the boys to Yuffie throughout the course of the year. "You know, half of you had it just about right. We did date, way back in high school. We never really said anything about it, though, but we never really hid it either. If anyone had been paying any bit of attention at all they would have known, but no one looked."

"But we're not dating now, if that's what you're worried about." Cloud cut in as he noticed some students begin to give their own little victory parties in the stands at Leon's words. "In fact, we haven't been dating for a long time, not since high school."

Leon nodded his agreement and motioned for Cloud to grab something from off a nearby cloth-covered table. "And, now that we've gone and gotten _that_ off our chests, I am going to have to apologize for those few people out there who didn't care about this, or didn't know about this and who are just here to receive your diplomas. We're not about to waste any more of your time. So we're just going to be taking these wonderful commemorative covers for the diplomas we've already picked up and we'll just be on our way. Yuffie, care to join us?"

"Of course." She giggled happily and took Cloud's proffered arm as the trio gave one last wave before making their way across the stage, microphones left behind and deep in an animated conversation no one could hear and leaving the stadium in stunned silence.

And even though they were outside and all ready a decent distance away, they swore later that they could hear as the crowd erupted into chaos a few minutes later.

* * *

There was chaos everywhere in the betting hall hours after the ceremony had finally closed with each and every graduate getting to have their opportunity to walk across the stage after the many professors and administrators finally managed to get the crowd under control. They even had to lock the doors, trapping most of the spectators inside seeing as most of them were suddenly more intent on getting out and following the rogue valedictorian, salutatorian, and commencement speaker to wherever it was they were going than watching or participating in the rest of the proceedings.

Of course, due to the long delays by the time anyone managed to get out, Cloud, Leon, and Yuffie were long gone once more, and had set the school into another wide-scale panic. However, this panic ended with all those who had a stake in the bet rushing either to their computers (these were the smarter ones of the bunch as they realized it was going to be crowded as hell in the abandoned warehouse that constituted the makeshift betting headquarters) or heading straight to the source of the controversy in the hopes that someone (namely Luxord) would know enough to tell them what to do next.

"I don't get it! How could they have known the whole time? There is no one here who would have told them!" Sora was hysterical, as was Roxas, and it wasn't looking like they were going to be calming down any time soon.

"How in the hell have they _dated_ before?" Roxas was stuck on that point while Sora was fixated on the fact that they had been worrying about dropping the ball and giving away the secret bet for nothing. Sometimes it was good to be a twin. That way one could worry about one thing while the other worried about something completely different. "I just don't understand. There is no fucking _way_ they could have been dating without us knowing about it!"

"I think this is cosmic justice or something." Axel put in his two cents, and he was actually surprisingly calm for once. After all, he had been right. He figured months ago that Leon and Cloud had known at least _something_ about the bet, but he'd allowed himself to be convinced otherwise. It wasn't often that he was right and he was getting his basking time in now before Leon and Cloud popped up again looking for revenge this time. "We were being horrible to them, so they decided the best way to be horrible to us was just to let us go insane."

"That does sound very much like them." Riku added. He had taken the boneless acceptance route and was now slouched on a couch watching in vague interest as the twins wore a hole through little bit of concrete floor they could get to through the larger than average crowd. "Whelp, at least no one has to have the ever fun job of breaking the news to them. Whoo-hoo."

"Who fucking cares about that?" Larxene shrieked from a few feet over where she was busy pushing anyone dumb enough to get close to her. "What I want to know is who fucking wins!"

"What do you mean who wins?" Seifer yelled back from across the room as he was unable to get to Larxene through the crowd. "We win! They _aren't_ dating! We were just betting about whether they would before the end of the year not whether they dated years ago!"

"No! We were betting on whether there was anything between them or not, and there very clearly is!" Kairi yelled back from somewhere off to the left. "There was something there then and there is something there now!"

"Prove it!" Now it was Rinoa who was jumping into the fray. While she had come to see that the things she'd been doing had been wrong, she also had a lot more munny than she really had to spare invested in this and now that everyone was beyond the influence of anyone she was very concerned with at least getting _her_ munny back. "There is no way you can have any proof whatsoever of that unless they were to walk in here right now and tell you so!"

"Good thing we were planning on walking in here and telling you anyways." The crowd parted in barely concealed awe as the three missing graduates made their way from the door to the makeshift stage Luxord had created out of boxes about an hour ago so that he could watch over the students in order to get the best view of the pandemonium. Leon smiled smugly and turned his attentions to the main gambler himself. "Luxord, it's nice to see you again."

"I can't say I've ever been ridiculously glad to see you before, but I guess there's a first time for everything." Luxord moved slightly out of the way so that the trio could come share the relative safety of the platform with him. "It's about bloody time you got here by the way. They were about to start a fucking revolt."

"I would say traffic was bad, but since all the idiots that generally cause all the traffic are in here, that would be such a blatant lie I'm not even bothering." Leon responded evenly as the crowd around them began to slowly regroup for the second time that day. "Why did we have to come here in person anyways? We've got a plane to Atlantis to catch and you are pushing us dangerously close to being late. We gave you what you wanted, so if you will please give us what we want so we can go on our merry, little way and everything can be settle and over with and we can get out of _your_ way."

"Wait! You're going to Atlantis?" Sora was the first in the peanut gallery to regain his speaking skills and he put them to good use straight out the gate… Though there were probably more important and revealing questions he should have been asking. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"About Atlantis or about our apparently secret relationship?" Cloud quipped easily, clearly not concerned that Sora was near hyperventilation. "Or both? You weren't very specific there."

"You don't have to be a dick about this!" Riku quickly leapt to his feet, all thoughts of boneless acceptance gone now that Leon and Cloud were quite busy being assholes once more. "Sora's actually been trying to _help_ you and now your going to start treating him like trash? Bullshit!"

"Yeah, we know." Leon cut in, realizing once again that Cloud was only going to dig them a hole instead of what he was supposed to be doing. They really needed to find a way to get the blonde to say what he meant without making an ass of himself sooner or later. "Most of you have actually been pretty helpful, and I guess it's shit like this that makes one see exactly who their friends are who is out to get them. And Roxas, Sora… We are kind of sorry for not saying something sooner. To be completely honest, it wasn't until the beginning of this school year that we knew you had no idea about us. We thought you knew."

"Well, we didn't know!" Roxas was being gently but firmly restrained by his boyfriend who was now more interested in hearing Leon and Cloud's side of the story than getting revenge on the pair for making him just about lose his mind. "And when you found out we didn't know, the polite thing would have been for you to take us aside and _tell_ us so that we didn't have to spend the past several months worry about your sorry asses when you've just been sitting there laughing at us!"

"And when you found out that the bet this year was about the private lives of your older brothers, the polite thing would have been to _tell_ us so that we wouldn't have been going through the school year in the dark." Cloud shot right back and Leon let that comment go. He did have a point this time. "To the best of _your _knowledge we didn't know about any of this, and who knows what would have happened if we really hadn't? We could have broken up for real instead of for fake."

There was a resounding chorus of 'whats' from the peanut gallery, and more than few muttered and shouted curses.

"Cloud!" Yuffie hit the blonde square on the shoulder and sent him a disappointed glare. "Now you've gone and given everything away. They weren't supposed to know about that until we were well on our way to Atlantis."

"Well they wouldn't know about it if Luxord would have just given us our munny straight from the get-go instead of making us come in here for no good reason." Cloud argued back, clearly running into his limit for being in the public's eye for the day.

"Wait, why do _you_ get any munny?" Seifer seemed to have the biggest problem with this newest development and he was quick to make his problem known. "You don't get to waltz in here after everything's over and demand _our_ munny just because your stupid feelings got hurt!"

"No, you're right, we don't get to come in here and demand any of your munny because you hurt our feelings." Leon agreed coldly. "But we do get to come in here and take _our_ munny, because it is our munny now, since we technically won the bet we're just going to be taking it and leaving as soon as possible. But, uh, thanks for the graduation trip to Atlantis. We couldn't have afforded it without you."

Silence again and professors the campus over were taking notes as to exactly how to make a group of young adults shut up at a moment's notice. So far all they had gotten was shock them so badly that half were in danger of passing out.

"They are about to ask you why you won the bet, as it is what they were arguing about before you got here." Luxord pointed out happily. He had gotten what he wanted. He was now the proud inventor of the longest campus-wide bet in the college's history. That was all he had been in this for, after all. As far as he was concerned he was the biggest winner of them all. "Do you want to, or should I?"

"Yeah, _Squall_, why don't you tell them why we get to keep the munny and they are going to be left here with nothing at all." Cloud taunted. Yup, he was now pretty irritated and more than ready to head out on his vacation and leave all the idiocy of the previous year behind.

"I think you just told them what they wanted to know, er…. _Cloud_…. Fuck, it doesn't work the same when you don't have a mysterious handle no one has yet to trace back to you." Leon sighed heavily. "Whatever. The point is they know as much as they need to know and now if Luxord will give us our check we can go on our merry ways and you can pull that massive stick from out of your ass, okay?"

"You still don't win!" Seifer just wasn't about to let this drop when he had so much munny on the line. He also wasn't the type to stay quiet when he was confused either. He more the bluster about angrily type until he either got his way or people stopped paying attention to him. "By your own fucking standards you didn't win! You said that you two had been together this whole time, but you just said back at the stadium that you having been dating since high school."

"You know, I was wondering who was going to ask that question. I was kind of wishing it would have been you just so I could see the look on your face when you found out just how wrong you were, but I didn't want to get my hopes up." Leon seemed more smug than he ever had been which really was saying something as he was a fairly smug person in general. "The reason why we win and you don't is because we _have _been together the whole time. There are way to be together without _dating_… Actually… Cloud, have we ever been on a date?"

"No, we haven't and you know it, jackass."

"Cloud…" Yuffie sighed and tugged lightly on her friend's elbow. "Being bitchy isn't going to make this go away any faster… Though it is entertaining me very much, but could you please save some bitchy for the airport? It's much more fun to watch you torture complete strangers."

"You know what you _should_ be doing?" Larxene chirped from the back of the room. She was more than happy about this sudden turn of events even if it meant she probably hadn't won the way she thought she had. People were getting more and more pissed off by the second and there was still the very good chance that there would be a fight, and if there was anything she liked more than mentally harming people, it was physically harming them. "You _should_ be proving to us that you didn't just make all this shit up in order to make a quick buck. Who cares whether you've been on a date or not. It's just like you said: There are _other_ ways to be together. So now all you have to do is prove it and you can take your fucking check and go jump off a fucking bridge for all I care."

Cloud and Leon shared a shrug and a bland look before turning completely towards Luxord and away from the crowd, effectively snubbing the entire student body in one move.

"Proving anything to them doesn't matter." Leon stated calmly, fully aware that there was about to be a full-scale riot behind him as the crowd began bicker amongst themselves once again over the ways Leon and Cloud could prove that they really had been together the whole time and this wasn't just another one of their stunts. "Now, we had a deal. We don't tell anyone about our relationship and you get your stupid school record and we get our munny. Give us our munny and then you can better enjoy the brawl and we'll be out of your hair for good."

"Yeah… You would want the whole school to know that you're a bigger cheater than all of them combined, would you?" Yuffie put in, as it was quite clear that no one was paying them any mind so long as they weren't facing the door and escape any longer. "Now what would that do to your precious image if they knew you'd set this up almost from the beginning?"

"I would say that it was good strategy on my part." Luxord answered blandly as he reached into his pocket and produced the coveted check, signed and ready to go. "Besides, unlike you two, I _can _prove that I knew nothing about this until after the bet was completely underway. Have fun trying to get out the door."

Luxord smirked happily as he handed Leon the check and stepped off the stage, quickly and effectively disappearing into the crowd. His job was more than done and he had never been happier as far as the results were concerned. Besides, if Cloud and Leon were torn to itty bitty pieces by the student body, that could hardly be considered _his_ concern. It had been the pair's idea to come here in the first place. They could deal with the mob they'd started and he could just sit back and watch and bask in the knowledge that he had caused disorder without consequences once again.

"What an asshole." Yuffie huffed as she and her two accomplices turned to look at the sea of angry students they were somehow supposed to cross in order to get out of there. Sure they were distracted now, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to know that if any of them so much as twitched in the direction of the door, all eyes would be back on them and all hope of escape would be lost. "So how are we supposed to worm our way out of _this_ mess… They are a bit angrier than we thought they would be…"

"We push our way to the door and hope for the best?" Cloud offered up hopefully. "I dunno. It was actually _Leon's_ brilliant plan to come here. I was all for heading straight to the airport and getting Luxord to direct deposit our check after everyone stopped trying to kill each other over our munny."

"Okay, so you are no help as per usual…" Yuffie sighed and turned to where Leon was pondering the door all the way across the room with an intensity usually reserved for complex trigonometry. "Leon, as this really _was_ your amazing idea, I think you should be the one to be making up an equally amazing plan for getting us out of here in one piece… Or I guess for getting you two out of here in one piece. I don't think they want to kill me as of yet and I would like to keep it that way."

"I like Cloud's idea. Let's push our way to the door and hope for the best." Leon shrugged easily. "Unless you have another option that won't end in a battle royal to the death right here, right now."

"What if I were to say that _I_ don't like my idea anymore?" Cloud crossed his arms over his chest and sent a disapproving look over the crowd, some of whom were actually coming out of their own personal arguments in order to better glare at the trio still standing on the raised platform like sitting ducks. "You know, I really don't like my idea at all. Let's pretend I never mentioned it and go back to square one. I like having my arms and legs attached firmly where they were when I was born. I'm not exactly thrilled with the all too real thought of them getting either taken or rearranged because I stupidly walked through an angry mob I helped cause."

"I'm not too fond of Cloud's idea either." Yuffie put in her own two munny's worth as more and more people seemed to realize that fighting with each other wasn't nearly as satisfying as glaring at the cause of their anger with possible plans of murder or maiming in the backs of their minds. "While I'm about ninety percent sure they would go for you two should we make a break for it, that little ten percent is saying I'd rather be safe than sorry."

"I don't like the way they're staring at us…" Cloud did actually sound a bit nervous as now the majority of the room was, indeed, staring at them, A sudden hush descended over the warehouse and those last few groups of arguers finally noticed that the mob's attention was elsewhere and tuned their focus appropriately. "Oh shit… This is going to suck."

"Just follow my lead without being a pig-headed douche for once, okay?" Leon whispered out of the corner of his mouth as he took a step forward and stepped off the stage, those closest to him stepping back in confusion to make room for him and his cohorts as they mirrored his moves. He took another confident step forward and once again those ahead of him moved slowly out of the way, almost as though they didn't quite know what to do about this newest development. They had been expecting to have to stop a mad dash for the door, not a calm march.

It almost seemed like it was going to work and Cloud and Yuffie felt a bit of hope as they got close enough to the door to reach out and touch it, willing Leon to just go as quickly as he could and never look back, and as such they were intensely disappointed (but not really surprised all things considered as Leon was strangely the one who wanted to go out with a bang instead of it being the other way around like it usually was) as he stopped and turned back to face the crowd. Of course, they weren't ones to stand between him and the mass of would-be murderers when they could be behind him and much closer to the door and freedom, so they moved behind him rather quickly. After all, what kinds of friends would they be if they weren't ready to throw him to the wolves at a moment's notice?

"Leon, what are you doing?" Cloud hissed at the back of his roommate's head. They were so close to getting out there with maybe even a small head start and now Leon was trying to ruin that by doing…. Well, he didn't know exactly what Leon was doing, and he really didn't think he would like to find out.

"I'm just going to give them what they want." Leon shrugged easily. "Just go along with it, damn it and then we get out of here."

"You're not going anywhere!" Seifer had pushed his way up to the front of the crowd again but this time Roxas and Sora had followed them and they looked as though they were not below throwing punches in order to save their brothers once again… Of course, they were in this for more selfish reasons at this point. From their point of view, _they_ should be the ones with the sole rights to beating the ever living shit out of Leon and Cloud first. It was like their blood right or something. "Back off, you fucking brats. There is no way in hell I'm going to let you two let them get away again."

"Don't you dare touch our little brothers!" Cloud snapped angrily, suddenly all thoughts of his personal safety long gone as his younger brothers safety became the more pressing concern in his mind. They had gone through a lot in the past few months and Cloud never had been one to let person feelings get in the way of protecting his own flesh and blood. It was just an older brother thing. "I swear to fucking god that if you lay so much as a single finger on them I will break your arm in so many places, it'll take them weeks to put it back together right."

"I'd like to see you try." Seifer taunted back as Leon held out a hand to keep Cloud from jumping on the other man and undoubtedly pummeling him to death. "I can do whatever I damn well please, and neither of you are leaving here until you've proven to us why you won the bet."

"Just go!" Sora had managed to push his way past Seifer without getting the other man's attention and he now placed himself between the two warring factions. "You don't have to prove a damn thing right now. Just get the hell out of here before this turns into another riot."

It was about now that Yuffie suddenly realized what Leon was up to. There were a lot of people here that had hurt the pair either physically or emotionally over the past school year. There were also a lot of people here that had taken an active role in trying to not only drive them apart, but also to put them in significant danger. She had been hoping that Leon had learned his lesson as far as getting revenge went, as revenge was the main thought on the minds of those who had caused the most amount of damage in the past year, but it seemed as though he wasn't quite to the point where he could just go on with his life. He _did_ want a riot, and in the midst of that riot, he would be able to hurt anyone and everyone who had tried to hurt him and his family.

Yuffie didn't think that was a good idea for anyone involved, least of all Leon and Cloud who would be severely outnumbered even if Roxas, Sora, Riku, and Axel were on their sides for the time being, and so she reached out and pulled both Leon and Cloud further from the crowd and closer to the door, stepping between them to stand face to face with Sora about two feet away from him as they both suddenly become the buffer between the two parties.

"Get them out of here Yuffie." Sora muttered across the gap between him and Yuffie. "Roxas and I are going to beat the stupid out of them later, but starting a brawl is not the way to handle this."

"You think I don't know that?" Yuffie grumbled back, their conversation pretty well hidden under the sudden yells from the crowd for Leon and Cloud to prove their claims or get beaten into the ground instead. "When I signed up for this I didn't think that things would go this far. I thought that this was a joke or something, but it's gone waaaaay too far, even for me."

"No shit." Sora's jaw tightened as he clenched his teeth in a mixture of anger and frustration. "Fuck, there has got to be something we can do to get them out of here in one piece."

"Well, there is something… But you have to promise that you won't kill me… And that if I go missing, you make sure your brothers go to jail for my murder." Sora knit his brows in confusion but nodded slowly anyways and Yuffie put on her usual care-free smile and straightened up to her full height (which still wasn't all that tall, but it was better than her previous almost hunched over stance of before).

"Hey! Ya'll want proof!?" There was another hush over the crowd and all eyes turned her direction as she turned and quickly pushed Cloud and Leon against the door until Leon got the idea that he was not going to be allowed to have his riot right then and there and he opened the door at which point Yuffie shoved them hard enough so that they were half hanging out the new opening and turned back to face the crowd. "Well, I can give you proof!"

"Bullshit you can!" Someone in the back yelled out. In such confusion that had sprung up it was hard to tell who was yelling at whom any more.

"Hey! If she says she can prove it, let her prove it!" Came a female voice from somewhere in the middle of the mob. It sounded a lot like Larxene, but there really wasn't a way to tell.

"I can prove it!" Yuffie yelled as loud as she could (which was pretty loud all things considered). She paused just long enough for Cloud to drag Leon out the door as Cloud had now caught onto what Leon had been trying to do and figured out for himself that an all out brawl to the death wasn't in anyone's best interest. "It's actually very easy to check, you know. They tend to keep records like this for a long ass time!"

"What fucking records are you talking about?" Surprisingly enough it was Axel to start the outcry this time. He never had been one to sit on the sidelines and now that Leon and Cloud were out the door and on their way to safety he was more than content to jump back into the spotlight and get the answers he wanted just as much as anyone else. "Yuffie, they're out the door already so stop fucking stalling and tell us what we want to know before we just decide to mob _you _instead!"

"Okay, Jeeze! You guys are so impatient." Yuffie took a step back so that all she had to do was turn tail and run before taking a deep breath and readying herself to say what she had to say and run like hell… Hoping that Cloud would have had the good sense to at least start the car so the odds of them being successfully chased would be fairly low. "Well, if you will all just go downtown to the courthouse and talk to the wonderfully sweet lady in charge of licenses you'll find exactly what you're looking for…"

"I mean, it's not like you are allowed to hide a marriage license after all…"

* * *

"Where is everyone? I would have thought that the whole school would be outside screaming for you or your mother to come outside and tell them everything they want to know about Cloud and Leon." Zack asked casually, hoping that by drawing the four dazed boys spread out over the living room he would get at least one of them to move. They'd been laying there for the past hour barely even breathing and they were starting to scare Mrs. Strife. "And where'd you go after the ceremony? Aunt Sylvia was looking for you but it was like you just disappeared."

"Everyone's at the courthouse probably mobbing the poor clerks for information." Riku answered blandly. He had questions, they all did, but what was the point in asking them? Leon and Cloud were long gone a plan somewhere above the ocean on their way to Atlantis and Yuffie had told them just about everything they needed. All that was left was to nit-pick over the little details and the four boys were so over that by now. "And who cares where we went? We're back now."

"If you can call this being back." Zack exhaled loudly and pushed Sora's limp leg off the arm of the couch so that he could sit on it. "I would have thought that this whole bet shit would be behind you now and that you would go back to normal."

"Nothing's normal." Sora muttered as he glared up at his cousin from his boneless sprawl on the couch for knocking his foot down, but not quite caring enough to pick it up and do anything about it. "Nothing's ever been normal… Or, even if it had been, it won't be again and it wasn't even the normal that we thought it was in the first place."

Zack sent a quizzical look in the brunette direction before turning back to the other boys. "Okay, so now someone who is capable of speaking as though they don't have brain damage please translate that for me…"

"Cloud and Leon are married." Roxas slammed his head back against the side of the armchair he was slumped against in a brief attempt at dislodging enough brain cells so that he would forget that the last school year had ever happened.

"Well, yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with normality or the lack thereof." Zack answered easily and he finally managed to get a physical response out of the despondent group as the all sat up straight in unison and sent him their best impressions of a fish out of water at the same time. "Oh… That makes a whole hell of a lot more sense now."

"No! Nothing makes a hell of a lot more sense now!" Roxas' eye was twitching funny and Zack was suddenly forced to re-think bothering to get them out of their funk. "You _knew_ about that?"

"You didn't?" Zack asked nervously as he began to eye the exits. "Okay, so I knew you didn't months ago, but before that I thought you did. I mean… Shit, is there a way for me to get out of this _without_ getting my nose broken?"

"Probably not." Axel pointed out as he stretched and settled back down into the armchair with a loud yawn. "But far be it from me to help you even if I could. It's about damn time someone got the shit beat out of them around here and as long as that person isn't me for a change, I'm all for it."

"You don't seem too concerned anymore." Zack pointed out quickly in the hopes that turning some attention away from him would make it so that he didn't get his nose broken after all.

Axel shrugged. "Nope. After all this, it finally makes sense to me."

"It makes _sense_ to you?" Sora shrieked and those unfortunately enough to be the closest to him cringed as their ears began to ring a bit. "What the fuck do you mean that it makes sense to you?"

"Just that… It makes sense to me now." Axel rolled his eyes. "I mean Leon and Cloud are many things, but bad brothers generally isn't one of them. They wouldn't have done this if they thought you two were going to be hurt by it, but they didn't know you weren't aware that they have been together for what I'm guessing is close to forever, and then when they did realize it there was nothing they could do because it was out of their hands. Hell, they had the right idea of it. They didn't do a damn thing either way and they let everyone else do all the worrying and the plotting and the god only knows what else and they just sat back and made sure that they saw whatever was coming at them soon enough for them to do something about it."

"You know, every once in a while you'll say something like this and I begin to think that maybe we've been giving you a bum rap as far as your intelligence goes all these years." All those present turned their heads to see Mrs. Strife enter the room with her customary smile proceeding her as usual and Aerith behind her. "You hurt their feelings when you bet against them because they thought you knew about their marriage and that you were trying to say they weren't going to be able to keep it together. Then they found out that you really didn't have any idea about them and they felt bad, but there was nothing they could have done other than end things early and that would have actually have been worse for everyone involved than just letting this play out to the end."

"No, it would have been _better_ for everyone if they had come forward when they realized that." Roxas said stubbornly. "Then this whole thing could have been over and none of the bad stuff that has happened would have happened."

"No, they still would have happened and they would have been much worse." Riku stated softly. "Think about it. Had they ended the bet early then they would have made themselves even bigger targets than they have been. They would have the munny and they would have every person on campus out to get them and they would have had nowhere to go to escape until things cooled down. They weren't about to quit college in their last year just because the student body would have been out for blood."

"So _that's_ why they just took off to Atlantis without telling anyone." Sora nodded his head slowly as everything began to make sense to him at last. "By the time they get back people will still be angry, but they won't be on the verge of tearing each other limb from limb, and it won't matter anyway because they'll be at their apartment out of sight and out of mind instead of in their dorm and accessible to anyone who would want to get to them."

"And Yuffie did a pretty good job of getting rid of the whole 'they don't deserve the munny because they didn't win' thing that was going on. Now all anyone has to do is go down to the courthouse and see their marriage license in person and they don't have a case anymore." Roxas grudgingly admitted. "Although I'm pretty sure Cloud and Leon probably weren't planning on sharing that tidbit just yet."

"They were hoping to tell you that in private before anyone else found out." Aerith cut in. "You two were there when they put their names on the lease for the apartment. You didn't think it was odd that they signed it Strife-Leonhart when they've never combined their last names before?"

"They didn't pay any attention that day. We must have gone to eight or nine apartments before that one and I don't think Sora and Roxas can remember any of them." Mrs. Strife shook her head wearily. "You two were more concerned with helping Riku on that videogame of yours than helping your older brothers find an apartment."

"Oh yeah…. Whoops."

"They legally changed their names and scheduled it so that the marriage license came through on the fifteenth of October." Mrs. Strife nodded at the look on her twins faces. "Yes, that is why they always disappear on the fifteenth. You never want to be around your family on your anniversaries either."

"Wow… All this time and we never knew about it…" Sora groaned loudly and went back to being a boneless lump on the sofa. "We are like the worst brothers in the world."

"If it makes you feel any better, I didn't know they had been together until four years after they got together." Mrs. Strife offered up.

"And I didn't know until I walked in on them two years after they had gotten together." Zack added in happily.

"And I wouldn't have known until five years after they had gotten together and a few months after they had been married when I stumbled upon the marriage license when I was doing some volunteer work at the courthouse had Zack not told me about it a long time before." Aerith smirked lightly and winked. "So don't be too hard on yourself. In fact, the only one who knew from the get-go was Yuffie and I think that was more because she believed it just because she wanted to and it just happened to be right than anything else."

"When are they coming home, Mom?" Sora asked. "We need to apologize to them and make all this right. Of course, that doesn't mean we aren't going to beat them up the second they walk through that door for just letting us worry like that."

"You have every right to beat them up and I won't even stop you this time." Mrs. Strife opened her arms and her children got up and shuffled over to settle into her embrace. "What's done is done. I might not have liked it while it was happening, and I'm very sure that neither you two nor Cloud or Leon liked it once it started spiraling out of control, but it's over now and it couldn't have turned out better."

"But for the love of all the is holy… _Please_ don't ever do anything like this again."

"Oh, Mom… You know we don't make fool's bets…"


	20. Epilogue: Full Circle

_**Epilogue**_

_**Peace at Last**_

"Roxas!" Sora waved happily and Roxas waved back as he caught sight of his twin and began to make his way through the crowded quad towards where Axel, Riku, and Sora were anxiously awaiting him. "You're late. It's not like you to be late."

"You act as though I had a lot of a choice in the matter." Roxas grumbled as he took his customary seat next to his boyfriend. "Cloud and Leon were arguing about something undoubtedly stupid and then Cloud almost burned them both to death with the coffee pot on accident. I was lucky to get out of there alive."

"I don't see how you've survive this summer much less this morning." Axel quipped and Roxas smacked him lightly upside the back of the head before settling in a little bit closer. "So how are the dynamic duo? No one's really seen them much at all this summer… Other than Yuffie of course but I guess that's kind of to be expected."

"They are just as annoying and unflappable as usual." Roxas ran a hand through his bangs. "But they don't seem to be doing too bad all things considered. They've mostly been focusing on their business and they really did help me this summer since my internship folded at the last second. They kind of let me pick up a lot of the experience I needed with them… Though I'm not really sure when I'm going to need intense shredder experience in the real world."

"They had you shred their papers for them?" Riku asked and Roxas shrugged.

"I really don't know what they would have done had I _not_ been there to shred for them." Roxas rolled his eyes at the predictable antics of his older brothers. "Leon's so busy running in and out talking to lenders and clients and nobody trusts Cloud anywhere near that damn thing. They either would have been swimming in papers or swimming in emergency room bills for continuous reattachment of Cloud's fingers had I not been there to do it for them."

"Why don't they just get one of those nice shredders that have the finger sensors on them like anyone else who has an issue with spacing out while doing menial tasks would?" Riku asked, actually kind of curious to know the answer. It wasn't like Cloud and Leon were hurting for munny at all. Their number of clients had tripled throughout the summer and the munny from the bet that hadn't gone into their vacation had been invested with all the anal retentive preparation that Leon could muster. "I think it would be worth it in the end."

"The funny thing is that they _do_ have one of those fancy shredders that won't let you run the machine if your finger is in the way." Sora was the one to point this out as he had been the one unfortunate enough to have been dragged along on that particular shopping trip. "This doesn't seem to stop Cloud from attempting to kill himself with it every time he uses it though."

"What can I say? The man defies physics. I could probably write a wonderful dissertation on all the ways he constantly bends reality to either suit him or to make others scratch their heads in wonder." Roxas rolled his shoulders back until they popped and then sighed heavily. "You know, living with them wasn't all that bad all things considered. They're actually a lot more normal than most people give them credit for."

"That's kind of like saying car accidents are more normal than plane crashes." Riku pointed out. "Yeah, plane crashes might happen less often, but when they do it's a lot more devastating than a simple car wreck."

"I know you did not just compare my brothers' relationship to a plane crash." Sora huffed in disdain and Riku quickly backpedaled in the best interest of his sex life.

"So you don't mind living with them?" Axel asked as he had no interest in Riku attempting to cover his ass. It happened so often that it lost a lot of its entertainment value. "I mean, that's got to be awkward for you I'm sure what with them being…. Together and all."

Roxas shook his head and shrugged. "Actually it's not all that bad. They kind of keep to themselves and they aren't _complete_ assholes. They know that I would be uncomfortable if they ran around the house making-out in their boxer shorts or whatever else they do when no one's around. Honestly, staying with them this summer was probably one of the best things I could have done for myself, and Leon's convinced me to get a double major in business which will put me head and shoulders above most other applicants when I'm looking for a job after college."

"Wow… They really did teach you stuff this summer, didn't they?" Axel rested a hand on his chin as he regarded his boyfriend carefully. "There's something you're not telling me."

"You haven't told him _yet_?" The four boys looked up curiously as Cloud proved once again that he had an uncanny knack for showing up when there was a perfect one-liner for him to use to get into a conversation. "Come on, Rox, you were all gung ho about it when we offered and now you're acting like it's not a good idea or something."

"Really? You two really had to come here right this second?" Roxas sounded rather exasperated, which he was. He loved his brothers and he was happy for them and he even didn't mind living with them for the most part, but they were still the absolute most frustrating people he knew. "Why are you even here?"

"Tradition." Leon answered smoothly as both men took up chairs at one end of the circular table. "We've all been meeting here on the first day of school since you boys started high school forever ago. You don't think we would stop now?"

"I half hoped you would, though." Roxas muttered more to himself than anyone else. "But, no, I haven't had the chance to talk to him in private yet as he just got home yesterday and this is the first time I've really seen him. I'm about to have to tell him, though, aren't I?"

"Well, it's more like ask him, but do go on. We're listening." Cloud smirked happily and both men settled back into their chairs to watch the show.

"God damn it I wish you two would stop doing this kind of shit." Roxas groaned and turned to his boyfriend, desperately trying to ignore the curious looks of Riku and Sora and the mildly entertained looks of Leon and Cloud. "So, uh, Axel…. Cloud and Leon apparently have been making a shitload of munny recently…"

"It's a truly wonderful thing." Leon commented from the peanut gallery. "Opened tons of doors and all that shit."

"If you two aren't going to help, then you should just shut up." Roxas sent his older brothers a glare worthy of actually registering for the duo and they fell silent, though Cloud couldn't quite resist pantomiming eating popcorn. "Anyways, my asshole brothers are ridiculously rich now and have no need for such a tiny apartment when they could be living it up somewhere where there's not a twenty percent chance of there being a meth lab on the property, so they offered the place to me since the lease is paid for up to December of this year thanks to Mom, and I was kind of wondering if you would like to move in with me there…"

"Hey! What if I wanted the apartment?" Sora knew that he shouldn't ruin the moment, he really did. He knew that it was extremely rude of him to not allow Axel to answer and he was pretty sure he would apologize to Roxas about it later, but if there ever was a knee-jerk reaction that you just can't avoid it's complaining when a sibling gets something that you weren't even offered. And Sora was the older twin to boot! "That is so not fair."

"Life isn't fair, Sora." Cloud shot back, obviously excited about being able to jump back into the conversation without Roxas being able to get too pissy at him since Sora started it. "Besides, Roxas and Axel have been together for longer than you and Riku have. It's about time they started to get their act together."

"You also have yet to go to our apartment even once since we signed the lease whereas Roxas lived with us all summer. That means he gets first pick since you obviously don't care about it." Leon explained "But if there is something you want that we can help you with other than finding a place to live, we'd be happy to discuss it with you."

"Hey, I didn't even want to accept the apartment anyway." Roxas said in his defense. "The only reason I agreed to even ask Axel was because _Mom_ has the rent covered for the rest of the year, not them. They've spent more than enough munny on us in the past few years. They don't need to be buying us places to live, too."

"What are you talking about?" Sora wasn't quite sure where this was going, but he wasn't as confident as he had been going into this portion of the conversation. "They won't even buy us dinner for the most part."

"That because they're too busy keeping us in _school_." Roxas huffed angrily and crossed his arms over his chest. "They don't have to buy us dinner."

"Damn it, Roxas, did Mom tell you that?" Cloud rolled his eyes in more frustration than any real anger. "I knew she was going to drop the ball, Leon, you told me she wouldn't but I knew she would."

"Mom didn't tell me." Roxas admitted after a brief half second of debate over whether or not he should let his mother take the rap on this after all, but he figured she would be more believable when denying it than he would be. "I figured it out on my own after I looked into scholarships halfway into my freshman year here and they told me I was already covered through a trust fund up to graduate school. It wasn't that hard to call the bank at that point."

"I don't know whether I should be proud about how smart you are, or upset that you ruined the surprise." Leon studied Roxas curiously for second. "I think I'm going to go with proud."

"Hey, Leon… I think Sora's about to freak out. Maybe we should like go somewhere before that happens so we can truthfully tell Mom we weren't even there when he had a heart attack this time." Cloud was eyeing his younger brother with a mixture of smugness and actual trepidation. He was pretty sure that Sora was going to be okay after this newest revelation, but there was always that little one percent that made it seem like a good idea to get out of the area so as not to have this mental breakdown pinned on him.

"No…." Sora took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second to gather his thoughts. "No, I'm not going to freak out. I'm so over freaking out about everything, but I'm not happy that you two never told us about this either. Why don't you ever tell us about anything?"

"Do we really have to discuss this now?" Cloud rolled his eyes and slumped down deeper into his chair. "You've have all summer to bring up us not telling you things you think you need to know, and you've picked right now to do it?"

"You've been even bigger hermits than ever before this summer." Riku pointed out. "In fact, if you hadn't promised Roxas before everything blew up that he could come and stay with you this summer then he probably wouldn't have seen much of you either."

"That's true." Roxas was quick to jump on his older brothers. Yeah, they had done a lot for him this past summer, and most of it was things that didn't have to do, but that didn't mean they deserved a free pass for what had happened the year before just because they were being nice and friendly now. "And even with me living there, you didn't talk to me about anything all that important. If it wasn't work related you weren't exactly the most talkative."

"Of course they weren't going to talk to you over the summer." Axel bit his lip, but figured he might as well finish what he had to say. Maybe it was time for him to stop thinking of Leon and Cloud as ticking time bombs waiting to beat him into the ground and start thinking of them as normal people who just wanted someone for their baby brother who wouldn't be the biggest idiot to ever walk the planet. "Why would they sit you down and have a personal conversation with you when they knew that the rest of us were going to want the same answers sooner or later? They didn't want to have to explain themselves twice so they put you off until they could get us all together."

"You know, maybe Mom was right about giving you a bum rap as far as your intelligence goes." Sora scratched lightly at the nape of his neck. "That actually sounds like exactly something they would do."

"We are still sitting right here listening to every word you're saying." Cloud reminded the group of boys in front of him. "We don't appreciate you talking about us like we don't exist."

"But Axel is right." Leon spoke up and took the conversational reigns away from Cloud for the time being. They were really going to have to work on Cloud's issue with sticking his foot in his mouth soon, but now was not the time. "Though I would like to think that you didn't take us helping you as us being guilty or something, Roxas. You really did work your ass off this summer and we wouldn't have been able to do a lot of the expansion we managed to get done if it hadn't been for you there to pick up the slack and make sure Cloud wasn't hiding in the bathroom when he was supposed to be working."

"Keeping tabs on Cloud was the hardest job of all…"

"Don't I know it." Leon snickered. "But fine, we've been found out and I guess you all deserve some kind of answers… Oh, and I guess you also deserve to know that we're not mad at you any more… If we ever even _were_ mad at you. You're our brothers, even Riku and Axel, and we honestly kind of expect you to do stupid shit from time to time."

"And all that stuff you did for us after you figured out the others were way too much into it for their own good or for our good was pretty cool." Cloud added in. "So I guess it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time and we weren't right for being angry in the first place. You thought it was a joke in the beginning just like we did and then you tried to protect us when you found out it wasn't as funny as you thought it was going to be, and we appreciate that…. And you'll probably never get to hear me say anything like that ever again so you'd better bask in it now while you have the chance."

"We'll bask later." Riku rolled his eyes at Cloud's over-dramatization. He was coming to find more and more that Leon and Cloud said and did a lot of things they didn't mean for the sake of blustering about as though they were tougher than they really were. Of course, they were tough and they weren't people he would ever take lightly, but they did over-exaggerate how much they disliked humanity in general in Riku's opinion. "Answers to our questions now before you distract us long enough that it's time to go to class, please."

"You haven't asked any questions yet." Leon pointed out. "And you didn't say that this was going to be free story-telling time either."

"Alright… So how long _have _you two been 'going out' for lack of a better term?" Axel was the first to pose a question as he figured Sora and Roxas would be too embarrassed to ask their brothers anything of substance and Riku had gotten to a place in his mind where he didn't care about Leon and Cloud's reasoning behind anything. He was more than ready to chalk this whole thing up to a lost cause and get on with his life.

"Well, we chose to count from October fifteenth of our eighth grade year for reasons that are absolutely no one's business so it'll be ten years in October." Leon did some quick math in his head. "But if you count the times when I was with Rinoa, or that brief period Cloud was with Sephiroth…"

"Which we won't because math makes my brain hurt." Cloud elbowed Leon in the side and the brunette stopped his calculations with as close a pout as he was liable to come. "So ten years then, anymore questions?"

"And you two were just okay with each other going off and dating other people while you were supposedly together?" Roxas was the one to ask this question. "I find that hard to believe."

"It's the truth, though." Leon shrugged easily. "We've done a lot of growing up where it comes to relationships since high school. Back then we didn't know what we wanted and we weren't exactly willing to settle when we still had questions, so we went out, answered our questions, and then came back again. I'm not going to say that those times when we were dating other people weren't hard times, or that we weren't jealous deep down or whatever. They were just things that we had to do for ourselves before we could be ready to take that next step together I guess."

"Let's put it this way…" Cloud sighed. "Leon had issues, he worked them out. I got pissed because he laughed when I told him about Sephiroth asking me out so I did what I did to spite him. I got into a shitload of trouble and came back having learned my lesson. This story is closed now and will not be re-opened for future viewing. New topic, please."

"Are you still mad?" That was a very important thing to know as far as Sora was concerned. Leon and Cloud could hold grudges and for the most part people they were mad at didn't know it until they struck years later. It was a scary thought.

"We were." Leon admitted. "We were really mad for a long time. We were mad at pretty much everyone but Yuffie since she had the brains to come running to us the moment she found out about the bet, but we're now only mad at some people. We know what you and people like Kairi, Naminé, Tifa, and Yuna tried to do for us and we know that they would never have wanted to hurt us. That's not saying that all of you playing along was a good thing to do, but we aren't going to penalize you for it."

"Plus Mom would kick our asses if you two disappeared or something." Cloud popped his neck. "Though the thought of making you disappear was tempting for awhile there."

"I don't think I want to know exactly what you were planning." Roxas muttered to himself. "Fine, so this is over? We're just going to go on as though it never happened?"

"Well, it's not going to happen again, is it?" Riku pointed out. "Luxord disappeared to greener pastures a month ago and the betting ring was tipped to the campus police so they've pretty much been closed down. Besides, who the hell would be stupid enough to want to do something like this all over again?"

"No one I can think of." Sora agreed. "These bets were supposed to be harmless ways to have fun throughout the year, but this, this wasn't fun or harmless."

"And thus why there are going to be no more bets ever." Leon stated with an air of finality. "Sure, there are some people out there who didn't learn their lessons from this, but the majority of people did, and we're about ninety percent sure that no one is going to be making any delayed moves in the name of revenge."

"We would be one hundred percent, but we really can't account for anything Seifer or Sephiroth might think to do." Cloud shrugged easily. "But Reno's actually been really helpful this summer so the odds of either of them getting the jump on us are lower than we ever could have hoped."

"That's actually ridiculously good to hear." Axel let out a sigh of relief he hadn't known he'd been holding. "Reno's been moping around his apartment ever since New Year's Day and my aunt has been at her wits end trying to get him to not be all depressed and shit."

"And we've already apologized to him." Cloud offered up in reassurance. "As much as we tend to fight on a daily basis, we are friends and he's apologized for all the things he did last year and for not taking into account how I might have felt about a lot of what happened before attempting to pressure me and by blindly helping Seph."

"Epic." Axel nodded happily and sank back into his chair, fully content for the first time since that very day last year.

"So it's just over?" Sora asked hesitantly, still not quite believing that everything had turned out alright in the end. He was very much still waiting for the other shoe to drop and it hadn't quite hit him yet that there just might not be another shoe. "Just like that? We're just going to move on like nothing happened?"

"Well, yeah." Cloud rolled his eyes. "I think that if we were taught anything this year it would be that you can't change something that happened in the past. Yeah, last year sucked major donkey balls and yeah, we probably still have every right to be mad at each and every one of you, but what's the point? I'd much rather still have friends outside of Yuffie and I'm pretty sure we'd both rather still have brothers as opposed to enemies or a set of people who are constantly looking over your shoulders waiting for us to attack."

"Holy shit…. Mom _has_ been right all those years." Roxas' eyes widened in surprise and Sora gasped in the background. "You _can _be mature when the situation calls for it. Fuck, who knew?"

"And you two can just go fuck yourselves for all I care." Cloud grumbled as he realized that he had finally after all those years of pretending, messed up and allowed his younger brother to see the maturity he desperately tried to pretend didn't exist. "Don't you have class or something?"

"They decided to follow in your footprints for once and have Valentine's eight o'clock Creative Writing class." Riku offered up helpfully. "I don't know why they decided to do this other than it seems to be the easiest class in the world and they don't want to do serious thinking this early in the morning anymore."

"Ah, wise choice." Leon was smirking happily and he waved off Cloud as the blonde elbowed him in the side. "I think you'll find Valentine's class to easily be the most interesting semester of your college careers."

"I sure hope not." Roxas grumbled to himself. "I don't think I can handle another 'interesting' semester."

"I hear you, brother, I hear you." Sora mumbled in agreement and both boys cringed as they heard the familiar screech of a overly hyper Yuffie Kisaragi from across the now quite crowded quad. "Dear god, what is _she_ doing here?"

"She's meeting us here." Leon offered up by way of explanation as both he and Cloud got to their feet. "We've got something we promised her we'd do together this morning and we figured, hell, why not just meet her in the quad again for old time's sake."

"It's also none of your business." Cloud added as they waved one last time before intercepting Yuffie before she could make it to the table and quickly turned her around to disappear into the crowd.

"You know what?" Riku asked as they moved too far for him to see any longer. "I don't think I want their business to be my business anymore."

"I _know_ I don't want their business to be my business anymore." Sora let out a loud exhale.

"A-fucking-men."

* * *

Sora and Roxas somehow managed to stumbled into their eight o'clock Creative Writing class one minute before it was due to start no thanks to their boyfriends who thought they should further emulate their older brothers by being late to the one class they really and truly never cared about. They did not agree, and it seemed as though the professor at the front of the room seemed to be siding with them as far as the tardiness was concerned.

"Well, well, well… I have to admit I was slightly concerned when I saw your names on my list that you would be out to continue on your brothers' legacy of intense laziness and a high disregard for structure and learning." Professor Valentine looked a little happier than he usually did and Sora and Roxas took that as a good sign. They had been half worried that Professor Valentine would treat them like crap merely because their brothers had driven him up a wall for the past four years. It seemed like he was more willing to focus on the fact that Cloud and Leon were gone from this school and would never darken his doorway again. "However, do _not_ think you will be getting any special treatment just because I am unfortunate enough to know your elder siblings."

Sora and Roxas nodded solemnly. They had never really known Professor Valentine other than through their brothers' stories and through the rare times they happened to see him walking through the campus, but he did have a reputation for not being one to mess with. How Cloud and Leon had managed to be such pains without ending up dead was another one of those unexplained mysteries that they almost didn't want to know the answer to.

Professor Valentine spared them one last contemplative look before swirling up behind his podium and sending the class one of his best glares, fully confident for the first time in four years that he was going to get his morning class back under the control that only fear could bring.

And things were going so well, too, freshmen were cowering, sophomores were rethinking their decisions to take what they had thought was going to be an easy course and the few juniors and seniors that had somehow stumbled their way into this lecture were frantically attempting to come up with ways to get out of this with their GPA's intact. Sora and Roxas were just trying to blend into the shadows at the end of the middle row they had chosen.

It was the perfect beginning to the perfect semester until the classroom door slammed open five minutes after the start of class.

"Hey, Professor Valentine! Did you miss us?"

And sure enough, standing there in the doorway were the last three people Professor Valentine (or Roxas and Sora for that matter) wanted to see ever again. Yuffie, of course, was leading the charge with her ever present minions Leon and Cloud behind her, each one with the absolute most wicked grins on their faces.

"What the _fuck_ are you two doing here?" Professor Valentine seemed to be caught between wanting to rip their arms off with his teeth and curling up in a ball and crying. He should have known that it wasn't going to be that easy.

"You didn't think we were going to disappear just because we got our bachelor's degrees, did you?" Leon asked as the trio surveyed the classroom, catching sight of where his brother's were trying to avoid eye contact at all costs.

"Yeah!" Cloud chirped happily. "We're graduate students!"

Some of the students cheered, being fully aware of what this meant for the rest of the semester as far as this class went. A lot more entertainment than they had been expecting and a much more relaxing morning class.

Sora and Roxas just slammed their heads down on their table and refused to move for the remainder of the class period.

And Professor Valentine did something he never thought he would do….

He cried…

* * *

_**A/N: **AND IT'S OVER!!! OMG!!!.... I don't even know what to do with myself now that this is done and done and done for good! I will say that this has been amazing for me and appreciate each and every one of you who has reviewed, whether you reviewed once or every single chapter. You are my bread and butter. You are my life! And as such everyone who submits a signed review to this epilouge will receive a personal response from me with oodles of thanks and love!_

_Also, a fun fact for those who care... Not counting author's notes, but counting chapter titles this fic is exactly 207,726 words and 374 pages.... I don't even know how that happened. I don't think I WANT to know how that happened....._

_OMG..... So, uh, I have an idea for a new story already! I haven't actually started it so expect maybe a one-shot or two before the first chapter on that one comes out, but I do have a name for it. So be on the lookout for Convince Me, another Cleon epic from the one and only Scout!!_

_~Scout out!_


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